The other day, I finished my sophomore year of college. Feeling the stress being lifted off my shoulders as the year concluded, I excitedly told my mom stories of the year. I told her how great I felt to be done with class, and I told her how badly I needed a break from that place. The people, classes and life away from home was becoming too stressful. I needed to come home. I needed my mom.

And then she said something that made me completely forget about my stresses.

She said, “Now that I think about it, I was finishing this part of college with you girls.” You girls. Me and my sister. My twin sister. My mom did what I just did, while also caring for twin babies.

What. The. Hell. (Sorry mom for my language.)

Immediately, I felt selfish for complaining about my problems. I felt silly for complaining about miniscule drama and issues that I knew for a fact would not matter in a couple of days. I thought about how different my life would be if I had done what my mother did.

It’s difficult to imagine our mothers being anything but that. I mean, you call them mom, do you expect to picture them as anything else? But our moms were teenagers and college students and went to parties and did rebellious things that they will swear to you that they never ever did. But they did. They were humans before us and sacrificed a lot to give us the lives we live now.

And, let me just say, I live an awesome life. I go to a school I love, thanks to my mother. My single mother who did everything herself. My mother who worked hard to give me and my sister everything. My mother who struggled through the hard times but never gave up. My mother.

My mom is the greatest human in the world. She is strong and brave and beautiful and she needs to hear that more often. I think about the life she has lived and how it has been filled with more struggles and heartbreak than I could ever imagine. I look at her and strive to be like that. To take on life (with a baby in each arm) and say “bring it on.”

My mom deserves more than I can ever give. I look at my bank account that is embarrassingly low and wish I could have enough to send her to Hawaii or Fiji or Italy or somewhere she deserves to go. She deserves the world, and settles for me (lol).

I look to my future, a future in journalism, and I hope I can make it big one day and repay her. You know, buy her that house she deserves with a lot of land that I know she wants so badly.

But, for now, I’m a broke college kid that still relies on you to support my Starbucks addiction (that you started, may I add) and my overage data phone bill. I’m telling you, one day I will repay you.

Only right now, this article will have to do. I know you have never wanted the expensive things. Those things do not mean much. You like things homemade and from the heart. You have kept every painting and stupid story I have ever written and that means the world to me. It means the world to know that the things I work hard on matter to you.

Love ya, momma.