artThis post is dedicated to my seven (!) pregnant or new mom colleagues, with love. Welcome to the mommy club!

It was that moment of transition, the one of deep intensity when I was birthing my first daughter. My midwife asked me to think of all the women in our birth class laboring just like me, and then she reminded me of the beautiful babies that were born. She told me how there are women all around the world who have done what I was doing (in this very second, too). In rice paddies, in hospitals, in their living rooms, all laboring alongside me. This became my mantra.

You are not alone, mama.

The mantra stays with me through every stage of parenting.

Maybe you are sitting in a dark room, baby in your arms, exhausted and elated all in one. Maybe you are waiting in the doctor’s office with a sick kid, praying that he gets better so you can stop worrying and get back to work tomorrow. Perhaps you are pumping for the third time at work today and debating if that lock really works. Girl, there’s one thing I know for sure: You are not alone.

Every time you feel like you canNOT do this, you just cannot, remember that you have a worldwide tribe of mothers who surround you. It sure doesn’t feel like it sometimes, when everyone is comparing and competing. I know.

But we all have been there, in some way or somehow. Wiping pukey kids, saying, “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK,” and feeling unsure if you’re soothing yourself or your babe. Begging your child to get in the car so you can go home already. Hiding the last cookie for you and only you.

You are not the first mom to be challenged by whatever is hard today, and you won’t be the last.

No matter how stylish that other mom is, how organized her pantry is, how perfect her life seems, remember that we are all moms, and she is going through something, too. We are all sweeping up spilled Cheerios, we are praying our feverish child will be cool as a cucumber, we are hoping his classmates will be kind when we send him out into the world. Rather than letting the media divide us into homeschoolers versus public schoolers, working moms versus stay-at-home moms, and so on and so on, let’s unite and remember that we are more the same than we realize. And we are not alone.