This Viral Post Celebrates The Emotional Labor Moms Put In

If you're lucky enough to have a great mom, she's probably the person who makes sure you're fed, clothed, living under a roof, and overall healthy. But above that, if you're really lucky, she was also probably the person who made sure you're on time for your soccer game, that you get alone time when you're moody, and that your school project is turned in on time.

In short, your mom probably puts a lot of emotional labor into shaping you into who you are.

In a post to Facebook that has now gone viral, mom and blogger Cameron Poynter nailed what it's like to be that mom, who's the "keeper" of everything from schedules to emotional security.

"I am the keeper of information. Who needs food 5 minutes before a meltdown occurs and who needs space when he gets angry," she wrote. "I am the keeper of reminders. To be kind, to pick up their trash, to do their dishes, to do their homework, to hold open doors and write thank you notes."

In addition to keeping up with schedules and homework, Poynter wrote, she also is "the repository of comfort, the navigator of bad moods, the holder of secrets, and the soother of fears."

"All these things I keep are invisible, intangible," she wrote. "They go unnoticed and unacknowledged until they are missed."

As much as she knows that her husband and children love her, "sometimes being the Keeper is exhausting."

Her post clearly resonated with others — at the time of writing, it has been shared more than 43,000 times, and several other Facebook users have commented to share how thankful they are that she is speaking out on the mental load of being a mom.

"I think so many of us who are 'keepers,' men and women, get frustrated sometimes because there is no objective metric for how we're doing," she tells Refinery29. "The only rubric we have is the well-being and character of our 'people' — our spouses or children or students or patients or friends. And that can make you feel lost sometimes. Sometimes all you need is for someone to say, 'I see you. I see what you do. And it matters.''

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