People Are Sharing The Moment They Realized Their Mom Was "Just A Girl," And I'm Sitting In A Puddle Of Tears
1."I took my mom to an Air Supply concert once. I found cheap-ish tickets and invited her to go with me, not thinking it was going to be a big deal. Seeing my mom singing and dancing her heart out shocked me in the best way possible. My mom is usually introverted and reserved, but she was something else during that concert. That night, after we were back home, she told me that that was her first concert in 14 years. It made me emotional. Our mothers are really just living life for the first time, too, and want to experience all the magic life gives."
—Bradley, California
2."My mom lives in a senior community, and they recently had a sockhop. My mom went dressed as Rizzo from Grease because Sandy was 'too pure,' and she likes 'bad girls' better. Not only did I realize my mom is still just a girl, but she's also a badass."
—bblackberri35
3."My mom was only 14 when she met my dad, and he was several years older than her. She was an innocent young girl being pursued by someone too old for her at the time. She married him at 18. Had she not met my dad, and her life had gone a different route, what would that girl's life be like now? Would she have followed her dreams sooner? I believe she would have."
—Kim, 38, Oregon
4."My 'just a girl' moment was a few years ago. My mother loves stuffed animals and has a nice collection on her bed. She grew up with two brothers and little money, so her brothers' toys were prioritized over hers since they could share. My mom never got much, but now she buys all the toys she wants!"
—alexandra733654
5."When I watched my mom look at her grandmother in her casket just before the funeral. All I saw in that moment was a little girl who loved her grandmother so very much, saying goodbye. They were the best of friends. And then, my mom turned to my siblings and me and supported us during the service. I don't think she ever really got the chance to just be sad because she was so busy caring for everyone else."
—Anonymous, 28, Tennessee
6."My mom, who's been a nurse for 40 years now, grew up loving Barbie. She told me once that she knew she wanted to work in healthcare after having a Barbie who wore a great pair of horseback riding boots. My mom moved as a child, and one of Barbie's boots got lost, so my mom made a cast for her leg so she could still ride her horse without a boot."
—Liz, 30, Texas
7."When I was in college, my mom lost her mom, dad, and brother all in the span of one year. After they all died, I got a call from my college bursar saying that I had money that had never been claimed, and so they sent it back. I called my mom and yelled at her, asking why she didn't check the mail and telling her I lost a few thousand dollars. She apologized and said she was dealing with so much that it was possible she didn't see the letter or threw it out by accident. Hearing that made something in me click. I couldn't imagine losing my whole family and not going numb. At that point, I realized my mom was just a human being going through some shit."
—flyerboy6
8."When I told my mom I was pregnant (I had a high-risk pregnancy), she wasn't very supportive. I didn't know why at first. She didn't even want to come to my first appointment, even though I begged her to. It broke my heart and fractured our relationship until recently. I was struggling with postpartum, and she was there for me when I was having an episode. She held me and told me she understood. She then explained why she was so distant and unsupportive: before having my older sister, she'd been pregnant with another baby, whom she lost when he was two months old. My mom didn't want me to potentially experience that loss or mental warfare at such a young age."
—queenlovie
9."When my mom brought me a Mother's Day present despite me not being a mother. When I asked why she gave me one, she said, 'I don't have my mother anymore.' It made me realize how much daughters will miss their mothers, regardless of age."
—Amanda, 27, Indiana
10."My mother, who can only be described as uptight and disapproving of all things even remotely 'edgy,' has a belly button piercing. My dad was the one who told me, and my mom confirmed. She even explained how she was desperate to hide the piercing from her parents after she got it. She then revealed she loved 'goth' music when she was my age and always wore all black, which she also hid. I never thought in a million years that my mom would have allowed herself to get any piercings other than in her ears. I especially never imagined that a woman my grandparents described as a 'golden child' would have ever hidden anything from them. As someone who is a bit 'edgy' and 'alternative' but not always comfortable expressing their style, hearing that my mom was similar to me when she was young was eye-opening. Maybe we're more similar than I'd like to admit."
—Slate, 19, California
11."My mom got pancreatic cancer when she was 83. Thank God I was able to be around to help during those few years. She died at 84, a week before she would be 85. She said to me one day, 'I am so sorry you are having to help me.' I told her that she had taken care of me all my life, and that I only wished I could have done more for her. I realized in that moment how much my mother had given up in her life just to take care of my dad, brother, and me. I miss her every day and wish that I had spent even more time with her. She never even complained about how bad she was feeling."
—Anonymous
12."My moment was when we were going through my mom's high school and college photos, and she excitedly narrated the backstories behind each one. She spoke of the holidays she went on and the volunteering she used to do with her huge group of medical college friends. She looked so young! For a long time, I saw her as this authoritative figure. However, with my experience and being older than she was at the time, I was able to recognize that she sacrificed her education, family, and friends (values I could never forego) to move across the earth for marriage. She had a whole life before marriage and potential for a prestigious career, but started from scratch in Australia, building a life for me. It is extremely satisfying watching my mom be her young self again as she is beginning to realize that she can, in fact, live like she did in her stories."
—Anonymous
13."After my dad passed, it took my mom a while to get back into the dating scene (understandably). But when she did, and she had a first date planned with a man her friend introduced her to, she nervously called and asked if I could help her with her hair and makeup. She looked incredible that night. She tried on outfits while I helped her choose which one to wear, and I saw my mom in a different, but even brighter light. She ended up marrying the guy."
—Aracely, Florida
14."I wish this story were more positive, but it gave me such insight into the generational trauma surrounding body image issues. My mom shared with me the first moment she felt shame about the size and shape of her body. Her mom had cut out a picture from a magazine in the late '60s or early '70s, taped it to my mom's bedroom mirror, and said to her, 'You could look like that if you tried.' It broke my heart for my mom, knowing how many diets she had tried since before I was born, and how much smaller-sized clothing my mom held onto because she thinks she'll fit into them again one day. It's like she feels like her purpose is to make her body smaller, and I hate seeing her that way."
—Anonymous
15."It took me until my early 20s to really start dating, and even then, I found it hard to talk about it with my parents (whom I was living with at the time). I remember talking about some of my dating anxieties with my mom and having her tell me what it was like when she first met my dad. She had only been a year or two older than I was at the time, and already divorced from a bad marriage. She had no interest in dating again, but she and my dad became friends, and now they've been married for almost 30 years. Hearing her talking about dating at my age, with some of the same struggles I have and others I could never imagine, really put her life before me into perspective. My mom was just like me — a young woman with a whole, complex life, just wanting to protect her heart."
—Anonymous
16."My mom was only 19 when she had me. By 23, she had three kids, and by 30, she had five. We never really got along when I was growing up. My mom was a single mom, so she worked all the time, and we were never able to have a close bond; I felt like she never understood me. I'm 31 now, and I've been actively trying to work on my trauma for a couple of years. I realize now that my mom was just a child having children. She was kicked out of her house by my grandparents for getting pregnant at a young age, but she still worked her butt off to give us a good life. I understand now that my mom was doing the best that she could, and that she was just a girl with no guidance on how to raise children. It breaks my heart."
—Anonymous
17."There were two situations where I saw my mom as 'just a girl.' The first one was before COVID-19. My mom and her friend's daughter had come over to do a dance my mom had choreographed together. When they were doing it, I remember thinking, Mom's looking the happiest she's been in years. I realized then that dancing was one of her passions, and every time I see her dance, it reminds me of that moment."
"The second time was earlier this year. My mom's dad passed away, and we had to go to India for the rituals and the funeral. My older brother and I hadn't gone back in a little over eight years. We were driving somewhere in a rickshaw when my mom saw a vegetable that my brother and I had never eaten fresh before. She told the driver to stop, giddily got out, retrieved the vegetable, and said, 'You guys HAVE to experience this. It's amazing fresh.'"
—Anonymous
18."I realized my mom was 'just a girl' once I found out she got married at 18 and had me less than a year later. Yes, my parents love each other very much, but I also know that my mother's family was completely okay with marrying off their daughters when they were 17, 18, or 19, and completely expected them to get pregnant in their late teens or early 20s. Sometimes, I feel like maybe my mom was pressured into marrying my dad."
—Anonymous
19.Lastly: "Growing up, my mom was and still is my rock. Together with my dad, she took care of everything and called the shots, had solutions, and more — everything a powerful Latin woman is. As time passed, she became my grandma's primary caretaker and once again took control and delegated Grandma's care to her siblings. My grandma passed last year; she was 98! My mom and her siblings took care of the services and arrangements. Standard stuff. Before we knew it, the day came to bury my grandma. As the funeral home director was getting ready to close the casket and take my grandma to the church for her funeral mass, my mom just knelt in front of the casket and bawled her eyes out. I haven't seen her cry like that ever, and it made me sad for her."
"Here she was, the ball-busting, find-solutions-for-all, outspoken, strong-in-the-face-of-adversity woman, completely broken down. She was talking about how my grandma was always there for her, and how Grandma never judged her for her mistakes growing up. My uncles were consoling her while my mom just cried. It hit me there that my mom was missing her mom, and while my grandma was almost 100 and my mom was 65, she's just a girl who wanted her mom and will always miss her."
—Marcia, 34, New Jersey
BRB, I need some tissues. Was there ever a moment when you realized your mom was once just a girl? Let us know in the comments, or you can anonymously share your story using the form below!
Note: Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Gizmodo
2 minutes ago
- Gizmodo
This Week's ‘Strange New Worlds' Is a Little Too Cute for Its Own Good
Strange New Worlds loves being Star Trek. That's different from, say, Lower Decks, a series that loved being about Star Trek and the metatextual acknowledgement of that to the nerdiest of degrees. Strange New Worlds knows that it is Star Trek and enjoys that: its connection to the original, the warts-and-all embrace of episodic storytelling, its desire to poke and prod at itself endlessly, and its willingness to vacillate its tone from high drama to high camp on a dime. Sometimes, that can make for incredibly good fun. But sometimes, when it's just a little too much, the show can lose itself, not seeing the forest for the trees. Unfortunately, this week's episode leans a bit too much into the latter.'A Space Adventure Hour' is a Star Trek holodeck episode. Well, really, it's an extended excuse to do a Dixon Hill-esque riff and do a holodeck episode despite the fact that shipboard holodeck technology wasn't common in Star Trek until the time of The Next Generation, a century beyond when Strange New Worlds is set. 'A Space Adventure Hour' acquiesces to that—it frames La'an as its primary perspective and the person in charge of testing an experimental holodeck system aboard Enterprise because of her history with holographic battle simulators, seen in Discovery, and even Pike nods to the eventual existence of the Rec Room seen in Star Trek: The Animated Series. It ultimately concludes that the technology isn't there to be used aboard starships yet, setting the stage for its eventual refinement and arrival by the time of TNG. But that's all excuses. 'A Space Adventure Hour' exists because the Strange New World team thought, 'We're a Star Trek show, and you know what Star Trek does? Holodeck episodes.' And it is, for the most part, a perfectly fine one of those. 'A Space Adventure Hour' fits into the milieu of that Trek trope well enough and doesn't really add much along the way: La'an is tasked with testing the system's power draw while the Enterprise is at full operational capacity examining a dying neutron star; she does so by getting it to replicate a 1960s murder mystery whodunit inspired by a series of novels she read as a child, populating her cast of holographic characters with the likenesses of the main crew. It's a holodeck episode, so things go wrong, safety protocols go offline, and suddenly La'an finds out that to get out of the holodeck alive, she must solve a mystery designed specifically to challenge her. That's all stuff that we've seen from holodeck episodes before, from Dixon Hill stories like 'The Big Goodbye' to things like Voyager's 'The Killing Game' or, perhaps most inspirationally, Deep Space Nine's 'Our Man Bashir.' And 'A Space Adventure Hour' does a mostly decent job at hitting those beats, letting the regular cast loosen up and play very different characters from their usual selves, but it doesn't really build on the holodeck stories that come before it so much as it does just point at the expected beats of those stories, going through the motions. At least, until the climax of the murder mystery fizzles out with a 'twist' reveal—more on that later. So it's perhaps better than worse, then, that 'A Space Adventure Hour' isn't really about being a holodeck murder mystery. At least, it's not interested in being a particularly good one: what 'A Space Adventure Hour' is actually about is telling you that the original Star Trek, the show this show is a prequel to, is the greatest television show of all time, one that changed the whole world, and one that should've lasted forever and ever, and any plan to cancel it, or anything like it, is an act of profound hubris and misjudgment. Very funny for that message to come now, in Strange New World's third season, weeks after Paramount announced that it would conclude with a truncated fifth. But anyway! Strange New Worlds is not a particularly subtle TV show, but it's not telling you all this by literally just having characters in Star Trek turn to the camera and go, 'Star Trek is great!' Instead, it is a step removed: the titular 'Space Adventure Hour' and the key connecting conceit of La'an's murder mystery setting is a fictional 1960s sci-fi TV show called The Last Frontier, which has just been cancelled after its first season by a studio executive whose murder sets off the whole whodunnit. Anson Mount plays T.K. Bellows, the shy writer and Last Frontier creator who believes sci-fi shows are a social good and the future of the industry but longs for more, in the vein of a Gene Roddenberry. Rebecca Romijn plays Sunny Lupino, a former model and starlet turned Hollywood producer who backs The Last Frontier because she believes in its potential, our stand-in for Lucille Ball. Paul Wesley is Last Frontier's leading man, Maxwell Saint, a pompous actor playing the ship's machismo-fueled captain, pulling off the most tortured William Shatner impersonation yet committed to screen. Seriously, the pauses are interminable. All the motivations for potential suspects in the executive's murder hinge on the fact that practically everyone involved in The Last Frontier believes in the show as a force for good, even beyond being great television. As more bodies begin to drop and finger-pointing pokes and prods at individual paranoias, as far as pretty much anyone in the holoprogram's cast is concerned, Last Frontier (and through its thin veneer, the original Trek) is unimpeachable. The climax of the murder mystery narrative is even paused so Celica Rose Gooding, playing talent agent Joni Gloss, can give that 'turn to camera and say how good this show is' speech to La'an, evangelizing over a dead body right in front of her that The Last Frontier can, and should be given the opportunity to, change television and the lives of the American people for good. Again: not a subtle show, but the remove from what it's actually saying to what it wants to say to its audience might as well be glass, to the point you're almost a little insulted that Strange New Worlds didn't commit fully and have a holoprogram about a fictional murder on the set of actual Star Trek. Which is odd because we do actually get to see Last Frontier for what it is—the episode is bookended by an extended scene from the faux-show as a cold open, and its credits close out over a 'blooper reel' behind the scenes. And despite what the rest of the episode goes on to do to evangelize its worth, as a parody of the original Star Trek, it's oddly mean. The sets are significantly cheaper-looking than much of what classic Trek ever did, and the script feels like an extended 'Spock's Brain' gag but somehow even more convoluted. The acting (Wesley's Saint is joined by Jess Bush/Chapel and Melissa Navia/Ortegas as actresses Adelaide Shaw and Lee Woods, respectively) is intentionally clunky and ham-fisted, right down to Wesley's exaggerated Shatnerisms. The show all these characters go on to laud as a huge hit and a cultural game changer isn't even close to the original Star Trek's quality; it just kind of sucks. Strange New Worlds has done a much better job of loving homages to the look and direction of Star Trek before—the 'Balance of Terror' homages in season one's 'A Quality of Mercy' remain one of the show's finest hours—so The Last Frontier ends up feeling less like the show being in on a joke and more like the show just laughing at what came before it. It's an especially odd contrast with what the rest of the episode wants to say. But once it's got that unsubtle message out regardless, 'A Space Adventure Hour' remembers that it's technically a holodeck episode and needs to wrap fast, which is where the aforementioned 'twist' comes in. La'an's murder mystery ultimately doesn't really matter, because the mystery plot was an entire misdirect: none of the holoprograms in its setting committed the crime, but instead a holographic rendering of Spock, who was inserted into the program to act as if the real Spock had come to help La'an out with her test. A murderer she never would've expected, she gasps as she figures it out, less because of her personal relationship to Spock but more because the possibility of him being the suspect is thrown from so far out of left field that it doesn't feel set up by the episode itself and more of a gotcha once 'A Space Adventure Hour' remembered that it needed to stop telling you that Star Trek is good and finish its original plot. It's made even more thorny by the fact that this revelation climaxes back aboard Enterprise in reality with La'an going to Spock's quarters to resume dance lessons with him (a thing we're reminded of this episode that he's kept up with her since 'Wedding Bell Blues') and recount her experiences testing the holodeck out and his role in the twist… culminating in the two revealing their romantic interest in each other, sealing it with a kiss. It feels like an odd choice, wherever Strange New Worlds takes this over the course of the rest of the season. Spock's barely moved on from his romance with Nurse Chapel, narratively speaking—a plot that was given a ton of build-up and then all fell apart relatively quickly once they got together. La'an herself was already given a will-they-won't-they romantic arc with a legacy Trek character last season with Kirk, even if it ended unrequited. Especially given how 'Wedding Bell Blues' already used its three-month timeskip to justify La'an immediately compartmentalizing her traumatic history with the Gorn, it feels bizarre to just thrust her into a second romantic arc so quickly, like these are the only two options available to her as a character. It's a peculiar end to a peculiar episode, one that never quite manages to extend its charms long enough to effectively communicate what it wants. Strange New Worlds has gotten by on its charms an awful lot over its past seasons, but perhaps it's becoming increasingly visible that those charms have a limit. Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what's next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
Digital Trends
2 minutes ago
- Digital Trends
The Social Network Part II is coming with a new actor playing Mark Zuckerberg
Aaron Sorkin is returning to the world of Facebook for The Social Network Part II. While the Oscar-winning screenwriter wants another crack at Meta, the star of The Social Network would prefer to leave it in the past. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Jesse Eisenberg has passed on reprising the role of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Eisenberg earned an Academy Award nomination for playing the Facebook co-founder in The Social Network. It's unknown if Eisenberg's decision to pass is a negotiating tactic or not. Recommended Videos With Eisenberg out, Emmy winner Jeremy Strong is circling the role of Zuckerberg in The Social Network Part II. Strong's potential casting comes one day after the news that Mikey Madison and Jeremy Strong are also considering roles in the sequel. The sequel is based on The Facebook Files, a 2021 Wall Street Journal investigation conducted by Jeff Horowitz. White would play Horowitz, while Madison would star as Frances Haugen, the whistleblower who brought the information to the Wall Street Journal. THR's report indicates that no offers have been made to the actors, and the film remains in development. However, Sorkin's sequel is a 'top priority' for Sony. Excl: JEREMY STRONG is the latest bold-faced name to circle Aaron Sorkin's THE SOCIAL NETWORK PART II, and joins Mikey Madison & Jeremy Allen White on the hot list. The kicker: Is Strong going to be play Mark Zuckerberg and replace Jesse Eisenberg? — Borys Kit (@Borys_Kit) July 31, 2025 Sorkin will write and direct The Social Network Part II. The movie is not considered a direct sequel but rather a follow-up to 2010's The Social Network, as it explores Facebook's meteoric rise to become one of the world's biggest social media platforms. The WSJ report exposed the inner mechanics of Facebook and the negative role it played in the age of misinformation. While not billed as a 'January 6' movie, Sorkin did tell Puck's Matt Belloni last year that the sequel will explore Facebook's role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Sorkin, Peter Rice, Todd Black, and Stuart Besser are producing the sequel. Directed by David Fincher, The Social Network is widely viewed as one of the greatest movies of the century. The movie received eight Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director (Fincher), and Best Actor (Eisenberg). It won three: Best Adapted Screenplay (Sorkin), Best Film Editing (Angus Wall and Kirk Baxter), and Best Original Score (Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross).
CNET
2 minutes ago
- CNET
A Haunted House Comes With a Body Count in This Free Found Footage Flick
Summerween is here, and horror fans are already queuing up their favorite horror films ahead of Halloween season. While blockbuster movies are always fun to rewatch, checking out lesser known cult classics can deliver solid scares, even without a massive budget. Found footage movies are especially adept at this, and there are some amazing options that won't cost a penny to watch. Hell House LLC is a found footage horror movie shot in a documentary format, and it's currently streaming for free on Tubi. It was released in 2015, and over the last decade, it's become a cult classic in the horror genre. I've been a fan of found footage horror movies since the original Blair Witch Project way back in 1999. Since then, I've inhaled every flick in the genre I can get my hands on. Hell House LLC delivers a creepy, dread-filled descent that avoids the pitfalls of the genre and sends chills up my spine every time I watch it. A haunt attraction goes terribly wrong in Hell House LLC. Cognetti Films The movie starts with mentions of a tragedy five years ago, when a haunt attraction, aptly named Hell House, went terribly wrong and left a trail of bodies behind. It uses a combination of interviews with witnesses and journalists and footage from the event itself to set the scene of the tragedy at the Abaddon Hotel, all through the lens of a local documentarian seeking the truth about what went wrong the night Hell House opened. Hell House LLC starts with how things ended, which means that as you watch everything happening, you know it's all going to end in tragedy. Before you meet the Hell House crew, you see the aftermath of the night that everything went wrong. From a panicked 911 call to a local videographer who sneaks into the abandoned hotel to take a look, the movie delivers plenty of questions to get into your head, but ultimately no answers. When local documentarian Diane Graves manages to score an interview with missing crew member Sara Havel, things begin to get interesting. Sara has been out of sight since the night everything went wrong, but she agrees to sit down and explain what happened -- not only on the night that Hell House opened its doors to guests but also in the weeks leading up to the tragedy. The rising dread as things get worse inside of the Abaddon Hotel makes this movie worth a watch. Cognetti Films When Sara arrives at the interview, she brings tapes that have never been seen before. They detail the experiences of the Hell House crew, from finding the house to running into supernatural occurrences before opening night. While things are initially a little campy with a pack of 20-somethings exploring the hotel and discussing their plans, things quickly begin to go south. The Abaddon Hotel has plenty of problems, and the crew plans to sleep there until the show finishes its run. The build-up to opening night makes the movie well worth its 90-minute runtime. Scenes are infused with dread as the audience anticipates something terrible coming that seems invisible to the characters. Doors open and slam, shadowy figures are caught on the edges of the camera, and as the tension rises, everything within the hotel becomes more unsettling. Sara and her friends aren't immune either, as they each begin to be affected by the house. It isn't until the official curtain-raising that things come to a head, but the terror that infuses each scene as you get closer to the haunt's kickoff will have you yelling at the characters on screen to just leave that place. Unfortunately for the Hell House staff, they proceed to opening night, which might be just what the scary things in the hotel have been waiting for. I won't spoil the third act when events ramp up from extremely creepy to blood-curdling. When things begin to go wrong, they go spectacularly wrong, resulting in the footage that the movie starts with. The interview between Sara and Diane ends with the truth of what happened that night, whether anyone will ever believe it or not. Hell House LLC has reached cult classic status for good reason, and it's one of those horror movies I play on repeat. The best part is that the story isn't one-and-done. Instead, there are already three sequels, with a fifth installment arriving this October on Shudder.
