I’ll never forget it. I was a young mom of three, running on fumes, with my toddler having an all-out meltdown in the Aldi parking lot. He wanted the Aldi-brand “Lucky Charms” I was carrying—right then, in the parking lot. Not at home. Not after school pickup. Now.

He went boneless on me as I tried to wrestle him into his car seat, while I silently panicked about being late to pick up my other two kids. In the middle of the chaos, an older woman nearby called out, “It’s okay, honey. You’ll miss this someday.”

I forced a smile and got into the car, my son still screaming in the back seat. And in that moment, one thought spun through my mind:

“Miss this? You think I’ll miss THIS?”

I know she meant well. She was probably a mom herself—someone who raised her babies, watched them grow, and now remembers it all with a little ache in her chest. But in that moment, her words felt like sucker punch. Not because she was trying to hurt me, but because those words invalidated my feelings in that moment: exhaustion, overwhelm, and frustration.

The woman in the parking lot forgot something crucial—she forgot to remember.

Not the highlight reel. Not the filtered memories. But the whole picture.

Yes, she probably missed the baby giggles and bedtime snuggles. But did she miss the public meltdowns? The infinite exhaustion? The feeling of being stretched so thin it hurts? In that moment, she didn’t leave space for any of that.

There’s nothing wrong with nostalgia. There’s nothing wrong with treasuring the good parts. But when we use rosy hindsight to respond to a mom who’s in the thick of it, we miss the opportunity to see her. And moms deserve to be seen.

What I needed that day wasn’t perspective. I didn’t need a pep talk from the future.

I needed a look of solidarity.

A “You’re doing great.”

A “Whew, I remember those days.”

Or just: “Hang in there. But it gets easier.”

Because the truth is, I won’t miss it all. I won’t miss the parking lot tantrums, or the sleep deprivation, or the constant noise, and that’s okay. What matters is that I lived it. I carried it. And I made it through. And every mom in that season deserves the space to feel it fully—without being told to fast-forward to the day it’s all gone and they can look back with rose-colored glasses.

So maybe instead of saying, “You’ll miss this someday,” we start saying: “I see you. This is hard. You’re doing an incredible job.” Because that’s the kind of remembering that actually helps.