Mother’s Day can feel beautiful and heavy in the same morning.

One person wakes up excited to make reservations and buy flowers.

Somebody else wakes up already trying not to cry.

A woman somewhere is standing in the kitchen making breakfast before she’s even had a second to sit down. Somebody else is in the grocery store with their calculator pulled up and a cart half full, trying to make sure everybody eats this week without letting the stress show on their face.

Whew.

That is a lot to carry before noon.

Life can hold beauty and pain in the same hand.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, this song started making even more sense to me.

This is the Mother’s Day edition of The Soul Behind It, and I wanted this episode to feel like a real conversation about love.

The kind that makes you feel a little less alone.

That “did you make it home?” text.

A plate fixed without twenty questions.

A softer voice on a complicated day.

You can be in survival mode so long your body starts acting like tense is normal. Bills. Parenting. Work. Grief. Disappointment. Heartbreak. You keep moving because you have to.

Then one random moment catches you off guard.

Folding laundry.

Sitting in the car after work before going inside.

Hearing a song at the wrong time and suddenly your chest feels heavy for reasons you can’t even explain.

I know that feeling personally.

I lost my mother at 19, so Mother’s Day has carried different meanings for me throughout my life. I also know what it feels like to be a single mother, loving your kids with everything in you while trying to keep the bills, food, emotions, and your own exhausted body from falling apart.

There were seasons where life hit me so hard I questioned why I was even here.

I was tired.

And not in a way sleep could fix.

Heartbreak can do that. Financial stress can too. Feeling unseen over and over can slowly wear down your self-esteem and your relationship with yourself. Folks smiling in brunch photos today might still cry in the shower tonight.

Social media hardly ever posts that part.

Somewhere in the middle of my harder seasons, I started noticing something.

The more I learned how to love myself with actual care, the more strength I had when life got rough.

I mean feeding myself properly when my mind was racing instead of stress-eating a sleeve of Oreos.

Resting without guilt.

Choosing not to become my own enemy on top of everything else already going on.

Those little shifts helped me more than I realized at the time.

Self-love goes way past cute quotes and spa days.

It’s how you treat yourself when life gets ugly. It’s catching yourself before your mind starts dragging you somewhere dark. It’s giving yourself enough patience to breathe, regroup, and keep going without mentally tearing yourself apart.

That’s why music feels like medicine to me.

A song can sit beside you without asking you to explain your pain first. A voice can enter a space and soften the air a little. Music reaches places regular conversations sometimes can’t.

I kept thinking about that saying, April showers bring May flowers.

It sounds sweet until you’ve lived through enough rain to understand what it really means.

Some Aprils feel endless, with bills stacked on the counter, your nervous system worn out, and reality testing you while you’re still trying to stay hopeful.

Then May shows up with color anyway.

The rain wasn’t easy.

Something underneath the ground kept growing while everything looked crazy on the surface.

When writing Love Still Knows the Way, I had all of this in mind.

And yes, I’m talking about romantic love too, because let’s not play. Most of us want to be held, cared for, touched with tenderness, and loved without all the confusion attached to it.

But I also mean everyday love.

Sharing food when you can.

Noticing when somebody who usually talks a lot gets quiet and simply asking, “You good?”

A lot of us need tenderness way more than we admit.

That’s why this song carries so much weight.

It carries the energy I want moving through this world… love showing up in how we treat ourselves and each other.

I want love to find its way into homes, conversations, and our character.

Even in ordinary moments.

A shared plate.

A little patience with somebody having a rough day.

That alone could bring change.

So when you listen to this song, give it a few minutes without multitasking.

Let it find the part of you that’s tired and still wanting love to feel safe.

And if somebody came to mind while you were listening, send this to them. Just as a little, “Hey, I thought about you here.” Sometimes love sounds like a shared podcast and a simple text.

Before I play my song, I want to say this with my whole heart…

I’m really glad you’re here.

Still choosing another day and letting life have another chance to meet you with love.

Remember now, somehow…

love still knows the way.

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