To All the Moms I've Been Before

By Ashlee Gadd | April 2025 Newsletter

and

Apr 05, 2025

I recently chaperoned a kindergarten field trip, which is another way of saying: I was recently reminded that teachers are not paid enough.

As we shuffled onto the yellow school bus and made our way across town to the Sacramento children’s museum, I felt a flash of nostalgia creep up through my chest—followed by a hearty dose of mom guilt.

When my boys were younger, I had a membership to every popular kid place in town: the zoo, the train museum, and a place called Art Beast where children could make slop out of mud at the outdoor play kitchen. I took them everywhere, working tirelessly to pull straight A’s on my motherhood report card. Stimulating experiences? Check. Running out physical energy? Check. A perfect play-based childhood filled with wonder, creativity, and a variety of opportunities to work on their social competence and fine motor skills? CHECK.

Do you know how many times I’ve taken my daughter, who is now six, to the children’s museum? Once. On the aforementioned kindergarten field trip.

I’m tempted to beat myself up over this. How could I have done so much with the boys, and so little with her? Has she missed out? Have I deprived my daughter of a magical childhood consisting of every activity on the “What To Do With Kids in Sacramento” bucket lists? Have I become a lazy mother?

Covid is an easy excuse, of course. Presley wasn’t a pandemic baby, but a pandemic toddler, and a lot of those places were closed in the years we would have gone.

But the truer reason is this: I am a different mom today than I was back then. I’m far less concerned with the proverbial (nonexistent) mom report card. Back then my whole life revolved around Chronos time: food, outing, nap, repeat. Our days were scheduled by the hour, sometimes by the minute. I took it upon myself to be the Mother and Executive Assistant and Director of Fun all rolled into one exhausted shell of a woman.

Three kids in, I’ve calmed the heck down. A lot. And while I still love a good schedule, these days I like to think I’m more invested in Kairos time: sitting on the bedroom carpet watching my daughter choreograph a dance routine, playing Uno with my boys at the dining room table, baking banana bread on a Tuesday afternoon for no reason at all. I’m learning to be more present, less performative. More free-spirited, less frazzled.

I haven’t taken my daughter on 800 excursions all over town, but I like to think I’ve given her something else that is equally good, equally special. And that is simply me, including all the moms I’ve been before: the anxious mom, the trying-too-hard mom, the Google-everything mom, the know-it-all mom. All of those versions of myself have shaped who I am today: an imperfect mom who is still, forever and always, growing.

Happy spring, friends. And cheers to growth—both theirs, and ours.

Love,
Ashlee

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