What Mom Taught Me

**Anna Duffy** (0:03)
Hey, y'all, welcome to today's episode of Every Mom Needs a Friend. Hope you are having a wonderful fall day wherever this is reaching you. Or I will say I've been having some listeners listen, like back dating a year, two years ago. So whatever season you are in, hopefully you're having a wonderful day. Today is my mom's birthday, 10-21, and so I wanted to do an episode where I talk about her. I feel like as I've been rekindling this podcast over this fall, it's been really sweet to get back to some of the roots of it. Being a mom myself, I'm just so thankful for the ways my mom has sacrificed for our family, loved on our family, raised me and my brothers. But then also now, just being a mom myself, I just look to her for so much inspiration. So for today, I'm imparting that inspiration on y'all. So I hope you enjoy, and let's just jump straight into it. I think you're going to love it.
Goodness, it just feels like on my mom's birthday, the best thing I should be doing today is talking about her. So for today's episode, I am going to just chat about some things that she taught me. And these are things that she both said with her mouth. And then also, as at least I watch my daughters do to me, there's just so many things that our kids pick up that we have no idea that they are. And all of a sudden, they're repeating something or doing something. And you're like, oh, huh, you're always watching, are you? So for today, for my mom's birthday, happy birthday, mom. I feel like it makes so much sense to just talk about just, I mean, how much my mom means to me. I am impressed by her, to say the least. The fact that she has one more child than I even do. There was me and then my three brothers. She had them with this big age gap between each kid. So I think it was close to four years between all of us. So over a ten-year period that she was doing childbirth, diapers, potty training, all the things that I'm currently going through right now, she just did one more time and on a far greater scale. That being said, if you know my mom, you know that she is an absolute boss. And it's not because when she walks into the room, you're like, oh, Laura Brewer is in the room. It's because my mom is the most generous, the most kind, gentle. She looks for the least of these in a way that is about as biblical as it comes. And being her daughter, I always felt so seen and loved. And when I am talking about the different things that I learned from her for today, A, I want to make sure that y'all understand these are not filler. I picked 16, and I wish it was a nice round 20 or 15 But I really thought about each one of these things that she's taught me. And not all of these are things that she like actually physically told me, I guess verbally told me. No, some of these are just some things that I have gathered sitting here in my 30s, thinking back to how I'm raising my kids and the things that I want to impress upon them. Wow, I just feel so privileged to know that I have a mom that is as bad A as she is. And it's interesting now to kind of just be in the same city as her and to be parenting my kids because she didn't have that experience, because her mom passed away before any of me and my brothers were born. And so that kind of side by side, parenting with your parent in the room, it's strange. And I think the closest I can kind of understand it is once I got married, I knew nothing about marriage and I'm sitting in the same room as my parents who are married. And on paper, we're both equally the same amount of married. But from a time standpoint, from an experience standpoint, we couldn't be drastically more different. And so I kind of feel the same way with my mom sitting right now. Yes, she has more experience, but I'm in the throes of it. You know, what's her job? What's my job? What should I seek her approval on? There's just a lot of layers to it, and I'm currently working through it. I also think my mom is just looking for her place in it because she gets to be the Mimi. She doesn't have to be like the disciplinarian. She doesn't have to pick up after my kids. Honestly, the only thing she has to do is just like love on them. And she does that amazingly. So I could talk all day about my mom. And if you've been a listener for a while, you know I have this like wonderful relationship with my mom that I just feel like I want to say is rare, but I also think is just God ordained is the best way to say it. I think God is very specifically placed my mom as my mom because I'm a lot like my dad. So in a lot of ways, mom and I kind of like butt heads or spur each other on. But in the best way, I just feel like, wow, like, Lord, I'm just so thankful for the ways that you ingrained things by nature. And also you encourage things by nurture through my mom. So like I said for today, let's talk through a couple of these things, but they might feel a little bit rapid fire, and that's okay, because I could talk for probably whole episodes on each one of these things. And maybe I will one day because there's just some good stuff here. And these are in no particular order.