Mother’s Day is complicated, to say the least.

This year, I created an AI-generated image of little me, Kara, sitting beside adult me, Myung Jin. I then printed it out and framed it as a Mother's Day present to myself.

At first glance, it might seem simple or symbolic. Maybe even sentimental.

It wasn’t.

It felt confronting.

Tender.

Grieving.

Healing.

Honest.

Because Mother’s Day has become more layered and complex with every passing year of my life.

When I was younger, Mother’s Day was primarily about my mom. Rightfully so. It was about appreciating all that she gave, sacrificed, carried, and offered to the best of her abilities and capacities. Like many children, I saw motherhood mostly through the lens of what was done for me. The meals. The rides. The consistency. The effort. The visible acts of love.

As I got older, the picture expanded.

Mother’s Day also became about my sister.

I began realizing how much she mothered me, too. How often she protected me, guided me, stood beside me, comforted me, included me, and loved me like a second mother growing up.

There are so many forms of mothering that we do not always recognize in real time. Sometimes motherhood looks like responsibility.

Sometimes it looks like protection.

Sometimes it looks like quietly carrying emotional weight that was never supposed to belong to you.

Then eventually, Mother’s Day became about me.

First with Bailey.

Then Bailey and Emma.

And today, Bailey, Emma, and Kenzie.

And becoming a mother myself changed everything I thought I understood about love, sacrifice, exhaustion, identity, resentment, joy, grief, fear, and repair.

Because motherhood did not suddenly transform me into some purified, endlessly patient, selfless version of myself.

It made me more human.

It exposed parts of me I had not healed. It confronted me with my own conditioning. It showed me how quickly love and fear can intertwine. How often we parent from our wounds when we are overwhelmed, scared, dysregulated, or exhausted. How deeply we can love our children while still struggling with ourselves.

And honestly, I think many mothers silently carry shame about that.

We are often taught that good motherhood means selflessness, perfection, emotional control, endless patience, and instinctive wisdom. As if loving our children should automatically erase our trauma, insecurities, triggers, limitations, or humanity.

It does not.

If anything, parenting often brings all of those things closer to the surface.

Not because we are failing.

Because relationships expose us.

Especially close relationships.

Especially parenting.

Especially motherhood.

This year, though, Mother’s Day became something else, too.

It became about little Kara and adult Myung Jin.

About learning how to hold space for the little girl inside me with more tenderness, honesty, grief, accountability, curiosity, protection, and love.

Not just the polished or resilient parts of me. Not just the successful or high-functioning parts. Not just the therapist version of me. Not just the mother version of me.

All of me.

The little girl who learned to adapt.

The little girl who learned gratitude before grief.

The little girl who tried to earn belonging.

The little girl who learned to survive by reading the room, staying small, achieving, performing, helping, or pleasing.

The little girl who carried confusion she did not have language for.

And also the little girl who deserved softness.

Who deserved truth.

Who deserved protection.

Who deserved room for anger, sadness, fear, and complexity.

As a Korean adoptee, Mother’s Day also holds another layer entirely.

It holds space for the mother who carried me first.

The woman I will probably never know or meet.

The woman whose absence and existence both continue to shape me.

The woman connected to me through blood, history, biology, loss, culture, and mystery.

The woman I have spent much of my life simultaneously grieving, protecting, searching for, and trying not to think about too deeply.

Adoption creates complicated emotional terrain because love and grief often coexist.

Gratitude and loss coexist.

Belonging and displacement coexist.

Connection and rupture coexist.

And many adoptees grow up feeling pressure to simplify that complexity in order to protect others from discomfort.

To choose gratitude over grief.

Love over anger.

Certainty over ambiguity.

Yet healing has required me to stop reducing my experiences into either/or categories.

I can deeply love my adoptive family and still grieve what was lost.

I can appreciate what was given to me while also acknowledging what it cost.

I can hold compassion for people while still telling the truth about pain.

I can recognize love while also recognizing limitations.

Both can exist.

The older I get, the less I think motherhood is about perfection, excellence, selflessness, or getting it “right.”

I think motherhood is about showing up.

Messy.

Loving.

Unhealed.

Hopeful.

Exhausted.

Angry.

Joyful.

Scared.

Trying.

Failing and repairing.

Losing yourself and finding yourself again. And again. And again.

Apologizing.

Learning.

Adjusting.

Becoming.

Realizing love is not purity.

It is participation.

And maybe unconditional love is not what many of us were taught it was.

Maybe it is not endless tolerance.

Not martyrdom.

Not abandoning yourself.

Not perfection.

Not never causing harm.

Maybe unconditional love is the willingness to remain present in the face of imperfection.

The willingness to repair.

To grow.

To listen.

To become more honest.

To take accountability without collapsing into shame.

To keep learning how to love yourself and others more truthfully over time.

That, to me, feels closer to Kintsugi.

Not hiding the fractures.

Not pretending they never existed.

Not erasing the breaks to preserve the illusion of perfection.

But allowing the fractures to become part of the story.

Part of the wisdom.

Part of the beauty.

Part of the wholeness.

Not despite the breaks.

Because of how we learn to repair them.

I have learned a lot about motherhood between adult “mom” Myung Jin and little Kara.

And honestly, I think they are both still learning together.

Every single day.