Becoming a Mother Feels Like Becoming the Sun

An ode to the joys of motherhood.

Jul 22, 2025

My daughter took her first steps yesterday. As I watched her tiny baby feet pitter patter around the plush rug I bought years ago to cushion her future-now-present falls, I knew melancholy didn’t stand a chance.

Fellow Substack writer and mother

recently published her own post this week called But where is the joy? and now I’m feeling called to douse myself in yellow.

I am, as of late especially, experiencing a deeply profound joy in being a mother. I believe that this is because I have now traversed the milky rite of passage of the newborn fever dream and also clambered out of the trenches of blobby babydom. My daughter is doing things that resemble humanness. And now that she looks more like a human and acts like a human, I am starting to actually believe that she is a human that I created.

I spent months in awe of my spiky-haired infant in disbelief that she was real. How did I make you?

I no longer wonder if she’s a figment of my imagination. I simply look at her now and the world lights up.

Becoming a mother feels like becoming the sun. My daughter was born last June and now it is July one year later and it seems like the sun has never set. It’s just the way she does everything makes me wonder why I ever even bother to be sad about anything at all.

A slap on my back, then my thighs, and then my stomach precedes a bellyaching laugh from a mini person who looks exactly like I do when I’m red in the face from howling at nothing in particular but obscure sounds.

My husband and I ask her to say “Moo!” and she pauses, then says, “Baa!” and now we’re clutching our own stomachs, rolling on the floor.

I watched my daughter stand, step, and fall over yesterday for two hours. For two hours she slammed her knees to the ground as they crumpled onto each other and she didn’t even flinch; she simply gathered herself, smiling, to do it again and again and again. She beamed like, “Look what I can do!”

I watched her walk through the house I dreamed of moving out of all morning. She will have no memory of the first ground she conquered, but I preserved it for us both. That is my duty. I watched her bound across the grass and across the kitchen and across the hallway and now this place is permanently marked by footprints of baby feet.

When she smiles, I smile bigger. When she coos, I coo back. When she snuggles in, I pull her close. When she goes to bed, I miss her.

I used to fear the night wondering if I would ever sleep again. Now I fear the night because I want to spend more time curled up in the rocking chair with my daughter’s head on my chest.

I don’t care about the mess when she’s slurping water out of a straw and spitting it back out just to hear the splurging sound she finds so amusing. I let her feed the black bean fritter to the dog this week that took half an hour for my husband to make because she squeals when she can feed a living being with her own little fingers.

She puts her binky in her own mouth. I smile so hard my cheeks hurt.

She holds my thumb when I rock her to sleep. I smile so hard my cheeks hurt.

She says, “Diggleolerole! Oomba oomba oomba! Boohaha!” And I say, “OMG me too!”

She roars, and I roar louder, and then she roars louder, and then I roar louder, and on and on this goes until we’re out of breath, rocking on our backs like roly pollies.

Mirrors? Hairbrushes? Bottle caps? Empty boxes? Drawstrings? Scrunchies? Vessels of exuberance.

She pushes buttons. She turns off lights. It all seems miraculous, and for the miraculous, we do a little dance and sing a little song and light up like the sun.

My cheeks are burning, glowing, and radiating heat and glimmer. My hair is decorated with spikes like a cartoon version of daylight (or Tommy Pickles, depending on the day). It is hot all the time; I love the heat!

There is so much energy roiling about in space. I am among the stars, head resting against the backdrop of a navy blanket decorated in supernovas. My daughter finds me unblinking and bright.

I am made to keep her warm and call her home.

With love,

Violet Carol

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