This post is sponsored by Hallmark Signature.

I spent half the morning today running from craft store to craft store to gather needed items for this big wonderful idea I had for a Mother’s Day gift to make with Lainey’s classroom (“But Mom!” Lainey said, “I can’t give it to you if you’re the one who helped us make it.”). It’s the one holiday of the year where school crafts shine and go right for the emotional jugular–make ’em cry. The cotton ball snowman winter craft and My First Alphabet Book may be shoved to the back of the school project archives drawer, but the Mother’s Day handprint poem? It’s framed and hung for all to see.

Even the lady who cut my fabric this morning admitted her son’s first grade drawing and accompanying Mother’s Day poem was her favorite gift. “It’s hanging in my sewing room, and he’s 22 now!”

It’s an emotional one, this holiday. Nothing brings out all the feels like the word mother. Our love of one, our lack of one, our dream to be one, our everyday job of showing up as one, our memories of one.

If there’s any holiday to take the time to honor the people affected by a simple salutation–“Happy Mother’s Day”–it’s this one. I’ll get the pipe cleaner crafts and poems that make me cry from my own kids, and I’ll pass on my love to the mamas in my family without a second thought, but there are several other people in my life who’d especially appreciate some extra love on this day.

Because the whole motherhood journey is messy and beautiful and hard and is rooted in the deepest love we have–the kind that hits nerves we didn’t know existed, this holiday expands to so many categories. Women who lost a mom. Women who want to be a mom but are struggling to get there. Women who lost a child. Women who have moms but never hear from them. Women who have children but never hear from them. Women who don’t have children but nurture everyone else around them. Women who help us be better moms. Women who love our kids like their own. Women who work really hard as single moms and don’t have significant others to help the kids say “Happy Mother’s Day.”

I try to recognize these moms I know on Mother’s Day and love finding simple ways to do so.

Writing’s my love language, so I write cards.

And because cards that are personalized with real handwriting and good ol’ ink-penned words are my favorite, I like to find cards that are aesthetically beautiful, unique but simple on the inside so I can add my own stuff. (“I just like to add two words,” Brett says: “Love, Brett.”)

This year’s cards are Hallmark Signature–beautiful little works of art with simple love notes inside that leave room for your own more-than-two-words touch.

Want to make a beautiful, nurturing woman you know feel seen and loved on Mother’s Day but don’t know what to say? Here are 10 things you can add to your card this year to make an already beautiful card more meaningful. 

1. Thinking of you every day but especially today. Redeem this card when you want to vent/cry/talk/dream/hope, and I will meet you for a beer and listen/laugh/support/not-give-any-advice. Also, I will pay for the beers.

2. I skipped the cards with all the Mother’s Day poems and picked this simple one to say…Hi. I see you today. And I love you. This is my quiet hug.

3. Pretend this is a macaroni necklace that I made for you out of glue and yarn. I think that’s what you’re supposed to give a woman who loves and nurtures and shows up…and that’s exactly what you do for me.

4. You know how I know you’re going to be an amazing mom someday? Because you’re already amazing, and that’s all it takes.

5. Since I only made World’s Okayest Mom this year, my kids need lots of love to fill in the gaps where I can’t keep it together. Thank you for filling those gaps and loving my kids so much. I share this holiday with you.

6. Sometimes you give me really good advice and I don’t listen. I think that might be the definition of a mother/daughter relationship, so even though you’re not technically my mother…I love you like you are.

7. You’ve picked up the phone when I called approximately 137 times this year. That makes you my mother in some way. So hey…thank you.

8. I drew this picture of a dancing cat to put more “Happy” in “Happy Mother’s Day.” I know today isn’t always easy…but look–dancing cat! I love you…and I got your back today.

9. You make me feel like the best version of myself when I’m with you, and any woman who can do that deserves a Happy Mother’s Day.

10. Just wanted you to know…I watch you with your kids when you don’t know it, and I think the way you love them is magic. I’d like to add, I’m not watching in the creeper way.

I love that there are so many ways to celebrate and honor the journey of motherhood, and any holiday that’s dedicated to making someone feel seen and loved and appreciated is fine by me (alright, who am I kidding–ALL the holidays are more than fine by me).

Because there are no ordinary moms, celebrate them with #NoOrdinary card. Hallmark Signature cards are available in the card aisle, wherever cards are sold.

This post is written in partnership with Quad Cities Gigi’s Playhouse, an achievement center providing educational and therapeutic resources to individuals with Down syndrome in the Quad Cities area.

In preparation to speak at an event for Quad City GiGi’s Playhouse last week, I shuffled through some papers and added a few notes. “Is it an old talk you’re giving again or a new one?” my friend asked.

“A new one,” I answered. Because life has changed a lot since Nella was born and that defining moment has been joined by other defining moments–the lot of them now tangled together to create new chapters and new things to talk about—relatable things like scrambling to clean the kitchen before company arrives and getting three kids to school on time. Except it’s there—the “old” story that started this whole thing—tucked in the old book someone still asks me to sign once in a while, but also buried in the new stories, reemerging like it was yesterday when I retell the story of Nella’s birth and still choke up.

Photo courtesy of Heather Rodriguez.

These stories of ours that shape us—no matter how much they do or don’t define us, no matter when they happened–never disappear. We react to them, learn from them, make something of them, but we definitely never forget them.

Late Friday night after the event, a group of women hanging on to the last moments of the evening huddled in a circle–some in chairs, some curled up comfortably on the floor—a circle of listeners welcoming stories, laughing, connected by a thousand common threads.

And you know what surprised me? How much the old stories are vividly remembered—how much we still carry them with us today, how eager we are to talk about them.

A mother recalled the story of how her daughter was bullied…twenty years ago—and retold it in detail as if it was yesterday.

Another described the night her son was born and she too received the diagnosis of Down syndrome. That was fifteen years ago, and she can still tell you what the doctor looked like, what he said, who came to the hospital and how much it snowed that night.

Our stories may fade in time, but they still pulse through the lives we’ve assembled from them—especially if we’ve made efforts to make something beautiful of the stories we’ve been given.

Just ask Michelle who started the Quad Cities GiGi’s Playhouse, an achievement center that provides educational and therapeutic programs for Down syndrome at no charge to families. I visited their facility right after landing Friday, and on the way there I asked Michelle, “So do you have a child with Down syndrome?”

“I do,” she said, “but he passed away…nine years ago. I knew after he died, we had to do this.”

As Michelle unlocked the door to the playhouse to let us in, I stared at the faces on the windows—giant photo decals of beautiful children and adults with Down syndrome, photos that stretched across the entire front side of the building. Right in the center, next to the door, was a black and white photo of a sweet blond boy, all smiles.

“That’s Nathan,” my friend Heather whispered. “That’s Michelle’s boy.”

And behind the window? Nathan’s present day story.

Michelle opened the door and welcomed us into the main room of the playhouse which was filled with toy stations and study areas, shelves of colorful books, a karaoke machine, games, computers and photos of local friends who frequent the facility. It was vibrant, inviting…like home. Michelle excitedly told us about the programs they run—the tutoring, the therapies, the volunteers who love being there, the events that bring the community together.

“If I have to cancel an event because of weather?” she said, “Everyone’s devastated. They love this place.”

We finished our tour, locked up the playhouse and went on to lunch where other moms joined us, and we traded phones, gushed over pictures of each other’s kids and laughed about the times we’ve failed in motherhood…and won…but mostly failed. We dusted faded stories and remembered them as if they were happening right now. And in a way, they are.

Is it an old story or a new one? Both. Because our stories make us who we are today. And the best part? We can use them to help others live their story.

GiGi’s Playhouse is doing just that by providing valuable resources and connection to families of individuals with Down syndrome. And in Quad Cities, if you look beyond the beautiful faces on the windows of the building on 38th Avenue, you’ll witness a greater story being written–defining moments of the past woven with the joys of the present to yield the promise of a fulfilling future.

If you’re in the Quad Cities area, please visit here to find how you can support the GiGi’s Playhouse mission.

I was going for strawberries. “They start in early April,” the Internet said after a brief “U-pick Southwest Florida” Google search. If they start in early April, I figured two weeks into the month would be prime strawberry picking–the perfect kind of weekend adventure I’ve been craving with my kids. We’d get up early on Sunday–let Brett sleep in–head to the magical field of strawberries we didn’t realize existed only minutes from our home and we’d pick under the golden rays of not-too-hot-just-right sun until our heart’s content–testing the biggest ripest berries right there in the field. Strawberry pie would, of course, follow as would smoothies and shortcakes and an attempt at Domestic Bucket List Item #32–homemade jam. “We’ll pick some for the neighbors too,” I told myself as the IDEA FOR FUN THING TO DO snowballed in my brain, getting more specific with each minute, heightening my excitement from baseline Already Childlike to Even More Childlike. This is what I do. Every time. And, more often than not, this is how it turns out…

Different.

Little Eager Beaver called the magical field of strawberries Saturday evening to properly prepare for our dreamy Sunday visions.

“Hey, I live in Naples and can’t believe I’ve never checked you guys out. I’m bringing my kids to pick strawberries tomorrow morning, and I–”

“Aw m’am, I’m sorry, but our strawberry season is over,” the woman informed–like detonating a bomb. “Our fields are all picked.”

Poof. Goodbye dreamy Sunday vision. I guess Google wasn’t kidding around with that “very brief picking season” stuff.

“Yeah,” the woman continued, “we’re all picked out and closing for the summer soon. Just the U-pick flower field and–”

“Wait–what?” I interrupted. Because for a minute there I thought she said U-PICK FLOWER FIELD.

“We’ve still got our sunflower and snapdragon fields,” she went on. “You can cut whatever you want from those if you want.”

Sweet mother of snapdragon dreams, you mean to tell me there’s a field of flowers close by we can pick from? We can twirl in? We can frolic and skip and sing THE HILLS ARE ALIVE while we pick, while we twirl, while we sing to the botanical gods of goodness who made this happen?

“KIDS! KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDS! GET IN THE CAR! GRAB A FLOWER-PICKIN’ BASKET AND GET IN THE FREAKING CAR!”

And that’s the thing I keep learning. Just because the thing we dreamed up didn’t happen doesn’t mean we don’t get what we want. And it’s less (okay nothing) about that Bible-store plaque “If God closes a door, he opens a window” stuff and more about the inevitable hilarity of life and our reaction to it.

We didn’t get our strawberries. But there’s more than one way to make homemade jam, and this weekend’s preserves looked a little more…colorful.

…a little garden tour for you.

Happy dance. Happy twirl.

Prettiest cup my cup holder ever did see.

We didn’t make pie, but we did bake up some flower crowns.

Dream up all the things as childish as those dreams may be. Throw those little dream boomerangs out into the universe. Just know they might come back to you in a different way than you expected.

Either way…you still get to make a pretty bouquet of what returns.

Happy Happy Monday.