As we progress through this strange thing called life we have many best friends.
We’ve had the good and the bad best friends. We’ve encountered friends that lifted us to the highest heights and those that have left us feeling lower than low. Through it all, we have one friend, rock, and guru that helps us with the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Our mothers are a blessing that encourage us, advise us, love us, and give us a heaping dose of reality when we need it. We’re so grateful for these wonderful women who’s lives have been devoted to improving ours. This woman is your best confidant and a person who will truly have your best interest in mind.
She’s seen you at your best and your worst.
I’m sure Stacey is a wonderful best friend and you’re extremely grateful she took care of you that night you had fourteen jello shots at Mike’s party (all hail Stacey).
But when you had the flu for fourteen days in middle school, who was it that made you chicken soup then? Your mother saw you through your terrible twos, your bratty preteen phase, and that time you puked in the bathtub (even though the toilet was right there!).
Nobody has seen you through worse and been there for you through better.
She is willing to sacrifice her happiness for yours.
You’d be hard-pressed to find a best friend in the freshman dorms who’d give up their happiness to help you pursue your wildest dreams.
Your mother, however, may have given up a fulfilling career to raise you, sacrificed pieces of her social life, and continues to put your happiness over hers even today.
She wants you to be happy simply because it makes her happy to see you successful. She’ll support the crazy things you do and love you enough to let you make your own mistakes. She’ll even bail you out when you get in too deep. Few forms of love exist like this.
She just gets you.
Every family has its issues and every family has its own special brand of dysfunction and instability (if your family is anything like mine, they produce enough dysfunction to sell at Walmart).
With these issues come patterns of behavior. If that Intro to Psychology class taught us anything, it’s that we inherit these patterns and issues from our parents. Our mothers understand our issues because they are her issues too. She gets why we make the mistakes we do and advises us to avoid making the same mistakes she made.
She genuinely wants to hear about your life.
When these issues surface and you have to deal with them, your mother will want to help you work through them. While listening to your boy drama might sometimes be a burden for your friends, your mom actually wants to know.
It hurts her to see you hurt and she wants to make the pain go away like she used to. Whether it’s through the advice she gives or by simply listening, your mother wants to see you come out unscathed and has invested a lot in your happiness. If you aren’t happy, neither is she and she will often listen to your problems until you resolve them, even if you’re making the same mistake ten times in a row.
She knows when it’s time to give tough love.
Sometimes when you do make the same mistake over and over, she’s willing to tell you like it is. She loves you enough to talk crap to your face and then tell people positive things about you behind your back. It doesn’t get realer than that.
How many people in your life follow that same pattern? It’s likely there aren’t many. Your mother will usually be as real as it gets, and there’s little you could say to each other that would ruin that bond.
She loves you unconditionally.
Remember when you went through that bratty phase and you mouthed off to your mom and called her the b-word. Yeah, hell broke loose that day. She slapped you across the phase and grounded you for three weeks.
As time went on, you got increasingly more resentful, dressed in all black, and for three years told your friends you hated her. I’d like to see any other friendship in your life handle that kind of strain and come out the better as a result.
Now you know your mother your mother did the things she did from a place of love and because she genuinely wants to see you be the best version of yourself. She’s the best friend you’ve ever had and you owe her the world.
[Featured Image Credit: Elite Daily]