If She Can Do It, I Can Do It.

I believe in my mom.

In my childhood memories she appears as the sunshine behind my back, a figure that I can sense but not see.

My mother has never been easy to figure out. She rarely talks about herself. She is not one to talk about her childhood or tell stories about how glamorous she was before she had children. As a child, this led me to believe that she was born to be my mommy—that being a mom is all she had ever wanted to do.

One thing I do know about my mom is that as a teenager she was constantly plagued by fear. Overcoming her fears has been one of her fiercest struggles in life to this day. During my teenage years, I also struggled under the heavy burden of fear. For several years, irrational fears crowded my thoughts and stole my joy.

I am now a married young woman, making my own way in the world, and several times a week, I will hear or remember a song. In my head, I will hear my mother singing “Brown Eyed Girl” to my little sister on our way to Kindergarten. I will hear my mother singing “Your Song” to my dad while preparing dinner. I hear her coming into my room during my high school years waking me up with the chorus, “This is the Day That the Lord Has Made.” In my memories, she sings in a loud, exuberant, sweet tone, never taking herself seriously.

The days are gone when I wake up to my mother’s singing, but I have come to realize that she is the voice in my head. When my heart beats, she is in it, singing along to the rhythm, reminding me that I am flesh of her flesh and bone of her bones.

The irony of my mom being one whose fiercest struggle is fear is that she herself drives fear out from the core of my being. Whenever I fear the things that life will bring, I think of her unshakeable strength, her quiet suffering, her peaceful confidence, and I’m not afraid. Even in my darkest moments, I can face anything that life gives me with courage, dignity, and grace. If she can do it, I can do it. This I believe.