6 Emotional Mother’s Day Posts From Celebrities We Love
Mother's Day might have been yesterday (May 9) but we're still in awe of these celebratory posts courtesy of our favorite celebrity moms and their loved ones. Moms of all kinds—biological or not—are superhuman. These mamas below have inspired us with their resilience, beauty, and determined spirit this year, and sharing these messages is proof of that. Let us take their wisdom beyond a "Happy Mother's Day" post and as Tracee Ellis Ross put it "honor the mother within each of us."
Gabrielle Union
Gabrielle wrote on Instagram:
"My journey to motherhood was long, arduous and at many times extremely painful. Mother's Day will always be a challenging day to celebrate for me. I know I'm not alone in this feeling. For many reasons, so many of us have a rough time today and to these good people, I send all my love, light and compassion. To all the Moms, Stepmoms, Bonus Mom's, Folks who Mother those that need it, Grandma's, House Mothers, I celebrate you today and everyday. Be good to yourselves."
The 45-year-old actress has been vocal via social media and in her 2017 book, We're Going to Need More Wine, about her struggles with infertility and failed IVF treatments. She had multiple miscarriages before having her daughter Kaavia via surrogate. Her honesty about Mother's Day being a "challenging day to celebrate" for not just her, but so many others is a sentiment not often expressed.
Michelle Obama
Michelle Obama once the First Lady and mom of this country. She is beloved by many so much so she's earned the nickname "our forever FLOTUS." In true Obama fashion, Barack honored not just her this Mother's Day, but all versions of moms including his in a beautiful message that represents inclusivity. The former POTUS captioned a photo shared on Instagram:
"On this Mother's Day, I want to thank Michelle for being such an incredible mom to our girls. And I hope you'll take a moment to thank the women in your life who love you in that special way that mothers do: biological moms, adoptive moms, and foster moms; single moms, grandmoms and godmothers; aunts and mentors—all the people who come to mind when you think about Mother's Day. Or take a moment, like I will, to remember the moms who raised and sustained us, and who we miss every day—no matter how long it's been. All of these amazing people deserve our gratitude, today and every day."
Jada Pinkett Smith
Jada Pinkett Smith captioned her Mother's Day post:
"That three generational #throwback for those sweet Mother's Day vibes❣️Check out our very special Mother's Day celebration at the Red Table."
Not only did this trio honor the holiday with a necessary Red Table Talk that honored coronavirus heroes, but Jada also shared this photo of their collective beauty that spans three generations. This throwback is a reminder of the legacy Black mothers build.
Vanessa Bryant
Vanessa Bryant wrote in a caption under a photo spending Mother's Day with her three daughters and remembering the daughter she lost:
"My babies~ Mother's Day❤️ Thank you for making me a mama @nataliabryant, Gianna, Bianka and Capri."
Vanessa lost her 13-year-old daughter Gianna last year as well as her husband Kobe Bryant. As matriarch to her family, she's led their other three girls through unbearable grief, and seeing them spend the day at Disneyland together, is hope to anyone that's ever experienced a loss that there will be better days.
Diana Ross
As a daughter to one of the greats and being a "great" in her own right, Tracee Ellis Ross reminds us all to honor the nurturing spirit within us courtesy of the mothers in our lives. She said about her mom:
"MAMA ~ I love you beyond! @dianaross
Sending Happy Mother's Day wishes to all those who Mother, who nurture and teach us about mothering and what it is [to] be mothered. A special embrace to those who need extra love today. I see you and send love to you. May we honor the mother within each of us."
Chrissy Teigen
In a Mother's Day post, John Legend shared about his wife, Chrissy Teigen:
"Happy Mother's Day to my wonderful wife! It's been a year that tested you in so many ways but you've come through stronger, wiser, happier and a better mother than ever. I'm so fortunate to have you as my partner, my inspiration and my best friend. I love you forever."
The mom of two touched us all when she shared the loss of her and John Legend's son Jack, which she was still carrying. Her transparency during what we're sure was one of the most difficult times of her life is something that sparked a fire in other women to open up about similar experiences. The same way John is inspired, so are we.
Featured image via Giphy
Jazmine A. Ortiz is a creative born and raised in Bushwick, Brooklyn and currently living in Staten Island, NY. She started in the entertainment industry in 2012 and now works as a Lifestyle Editor where she explores everything from mental health to vegan foodie trends. For more on what she's doing in the digital space follow her on Instagram at @liddle_bitt.
Beyond Burnout: Nicole Walters' Blueprint For Achieving Career Success On Your Own Terms
Nicole Walters has always been known for two things: her ambition and her ability to recognize when life’s challenges can also double as an inspiring, lucrative brand.
This was first evident more than a decade ago when she quit her job as the corporate executive of a Fortune 500 company during a Periscope livestream. “I’m not sure if there’s an alignment of [our] future trajectory. I’m going to work for myself. I'm promoting myself to work for myself,” she said at the time before flashing a smile at the viewing audience. As she resigned on camera, a constant stream of encouraging messages floated upwards on the screen.
By 2021, she’d fashioned her work as a corporate consultant and her personal life with her husband and three adopted daughters into a reality show, She’s The Boss, for USA Network. This year, she released the New York Times bestselling memoir Nothing Is Missing, written as she was in the process of getting a divorce and dealing with her eldest daughter’s struggles with substance use.
Convinced that there’s no way the 39-year-old has achieved all of this without intentional strategic planning, I asked her about it when we spoke less than a week before Christmas. I’d seen videos on social media of her working on 2024 planning for other brands, and I wanted to know what that looked like following her own year of success.
She listed a number of goals, including ensuring that the projects she takes on in the new year align with her identity “as a Black woman, as an African woman, as a mother, as someone who has lived a [rebuilding] season and is now trying to live boldly and entirely as themselves.” But, I was shocked by how much of her business planning also prioritized rest.
Despite the bestselling book, a self-titled podcast, and working with numerous corporations, Walters said she’s been taking Fridays off. This year, she doesn’t want to work on Mondays, either.
“A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement,” she said, noting that she’ll check in with herself around March to see how successful this plan has been. The goal, Walters said, is to only be working on Tuesdays and Thursdays by sometime in 2025. “It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to have happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change.”
"A lot of us think we work hard until retirement hits. I want to progress towards retirement... It is intentionally building out what I know I would like to happen and not waiting for exhaustion to be the trigger of change."
Walters said the decision to progressively work less was partially in response to her previously held notions about her career, especially as an entrepreneur. “When I first started, I thought burnout was a part of it,” she said. “What I didn’t realize is that even if you’re able to bounce out of burnout or get back to it, there’s a cumulative impact on your body. If you think of your body as a tree and every time you go through burnout, you are taking a hack out of your trunk, yes, that trunk will heal over, and the tree will continue to grow, but it doesn't mean that you don’t have a weakened stem.”
But, the desire for increased rest was also in response to the major shifts that occurred three years ago when she was experiencing major changes in her family and realized her metaphorical tree was “bending all the way over.”
Courtesy
“One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity,” she added. “That is some language that I think is just now starting to really get unpacked.” In recent years, there’s been an increased awareness of achieving balance in life, with Tricia Hersey’s “The Nap Ministry” gaining attention based on the idea that rest, especially for Black women, is a form of resistance. Even online phrases such as “soft life” and “quiet quitting” have hinted at a cultural shift in prioritizing leisure over professional ambition.
"One of the things we have to recognize, especially as Black women, is that there is this engrained, societal, systemic notion that our worth is built around our productivity."
If companies are lining up to consult with Walters about their brands and products, then women have been looking to her for guidance on starting over since she invited them to livestream her resignation 12 years ago. As viewers continue to demand more from content creators in the form of intimate, personal details, Walters has navigated her personal brand with a sense of transparency without oversharing the vulnerable details about her life, especially when it comes to her family.
The entrepreneur said she’d been approached to write a book for several years and was initially convinced she was finally ready to write one about business. “I started to do that, and then I went through my divorce. When that happened, I said, why would I write a book telling people to get the life that I have when I’m not sure about the life that I have,” she said.
Instead, she decided to write Nothing Is Missing and provide a closer look at her life, starting with being born to immigrant Ghanaian parents (“You need to know my childhood to know why I’m passionate about entrepreneurship.”) through the adoption of her three daughters and eventual divorce. Despite her desire to share, however, she said she felt protective of the privacy of her family, including her ex-husband.
When discussing this with me, Walters said she was reminded of a lesson she learned from actress Kerry Washington, who released her own memoir, Thicker Than Water, just a week before Walters’ book release. Washington’s memoir grapples with family secrets, too, specifically the fact that she was conceived using a sperm donor and didn’t learn about it until she was already a successful TV star. While Washington reflects on how the decision and subsequent deception impacted her, she’s also careful to hold space for her parents’ experiences, too. “A lot of things she said was that she had to recognize where she was the supporting character and where she was the main character,” Walter said.
This is something Walter worked to do in Nothing Is Missing when discussing her daughter’s struggles with addiction. “I was very intentional about making sure that I did not reveal more than what was required,” she said. “If I say something about someone’s addiction, I don’t need to go into the list of the substances they used, how they used them, what I found. [I don’t need to] walk into a room and paint a picture of what it looked like for people to understand.”
Walters said some of the most vulnerable moments in the book barely made a ripple once it was released. She was extremely nervous to write about getting an abortion, she said. But no one has asked her about this in the months since the book was released. Instead, people have been more interested in quirkier revelations, such as the fact that she once appeared on Wheel of Fortune.
“I have bared my soul about this thing I went through in my youth that has changed me for people, and people are like, ‘So how heavy was the wheel when you spun it?’” she said, chuckling. “It just goes to show that people never worry about the thing that you worry about.”
With the success of Nothing Is Missing, Walters said she still isn’t planning to release a business book at the moment. But, as she navigates parenting a teenager and two adult children while also navigating a relationship with her new fiancé, Walters said she believes she has at least one or two more books to write about her personal journey. “There is sort of an arc of where my life has gone that I know I’ve got something more to say about this that I think is important, relevant and necessary,” she said.
In just three years, Walters’ life has undergone a major transformation. There’s no telling what the next three years will have in store for her, but it seems likely she’ll retain an inspired audience wherever life takes her.
Let’s make things inbox official! Sign up for the xoNecole newsletter for daily love, wellness, career, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
Featured image courtesy
Issa Rae On Black Shows Getting Canceled: 'You're Seeing...Our Stories Are Less Of A Priority'
When it was announced a couple of weeks ago that HBO Max canceled the Issa Rae-produced series Rap Sh!t, social media was in an uproar. Many fans questioned its cancelation and the now incomplete storylines. Others pointed out what seems to be a recent trend with Black shows. Since last year, HBO Max canceled two other Issa-produced shows, A Black Lady Sketch Show and Sweet Life: Los Angeles. The streaming giant also chopped South Side, Love Life, and the Ballroom competition show LEGENDARY. After two seasons, NBC cut the budding popular comedy Grand Crew, and Showtime let go of the non-traditional late-night talk show Ziwe.
With each chop, many of us are wondering what is left of our stories. Issa spoke with Net-a-Porter's digital publication, Porter, amid Rap Sh!t's cancelation. “You’re seeing so many Black shows get cancelled, you’re seeing so many executives – especially on the DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] side – get canned. You’re seeing very clearly now that our stories are less of a priority,” she said.
While there has been a push for more diversity in Hollywood, and the tides seemed to be changing (i.e., recent Black representation at Emmy's, Golden Globes, and Oscar noms), the number of cancelation of these series tell a different story. The American Fiction star is even looking to possibly change directions in her career. “I am pessimistic, because there’s no one holding anybody accountable – and I can, sure, but also at what cost? I can’t force you to make my stuff. It’s made me take more steps to try to be independent down the line if I have to,” she explained.
Issa Rae at 2024 Emmy Awards
Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
As of now, Issa is excited to get "back at it" amid last year's writer's and actor's strikes. The actress, writer, and producer has her hand in everything from music to spirits, and we love seeing the growth. However, we first fell in love with the Insecure star from the TV, or if you're an OG fan, the internet, and so we're always anticipating what she creates next.
“I’m writing a couple of different projects – one for myself and one to produce and create with others – and I’ve been feeling so inspired and excited to get back at it,” she said. “I’m embracing that challenge. The industry is in flux, so it’s really inspired me to focus and hone in on what stories I want to tell. I’ve been laser-focused on getting these projects up and running.”
Ten years from now, we may even see Issa in a whole new industry because, according to her, she plans to transition into a life of service. I know that's right!
Let’s make things inbox official! Sign up for the xoNecole newsletter for daily love, wellness, career, and exclusive content delivered straight to your inbox.
Feature image by Tommaso Boddi/Golden Globes 2024/Golden Globes 2024 via Getty Images