27/08/2026
Last night, a local community was struck with tragedy when lightening storms claimed multiple homes by fire.
A precious friend of mine watched her home burn after it was struck.
She was there with her family- including her toddler son and infant daughter. By the grace of God, they all made it out safely!
Today, she sent me a picture of what was left.
And in the driveway, in front of the burned remains of their home, sat a charred and partially melted deep freezer that had been saved from the fire.
Because inside was her breast milk.
(It was still frozen!)
I haven't been able to stop thinking about that.
I've had the privilege of knowing this mama on both a professional and personal level. I first met her as a friend of my little sister and then came working with her in healthcare. She's messaged me with questions about feeding her babies. She's come to my breastfeeding class. I know how much providing that milk for her children has meant to her.
But there is something about seeing that freezer sitting in front of her burned home that has completely stopped me in my tracks.
Because I think it captures something about motherhood that is almost impossible to put into words.
A mother's instinct to care for her children doesn't wait for the crisis to pass.
It doesn't wait until she has processed what is happening to her.
It doesn't stop to take inventory of everything she has lost.
Her home was burning. Her belongings, her children's belongings, the familiar pieces of the life they had built inside those walls—all disappearing in front of her.
But once her babies were safe, her mind went to what they would need next.
Through the flames and the panic, her babies needs came first.
The milk. Save the milk.
Milk that took hours upon hours to make.
Milk pumped in the quiet hours of the night and in the middle of busy days. Ounce by ounce. Bag by bag. A little collection of sacrifices that probably never felt extraordinary when she was making them.
Until suddenly they were sitting inside a freezer in a burning house.
And still, she thought of her babies.
That's the part that gets me.
There is a kind of love that exists in motherhood that becomes almost instinctual. So deeply woven into you that even when your own world is quite literally burning down around you, some part of your heart is still asking:
Are my babies safe? Are they fed? What will they need?
Before yourself.
Before the material things you've lost.
Before you've even had time to understand the magnitude of what has just happened.
That's a mother's love.
It is fierce and tender at the same time. It is protective. Sacrificial. Sometimes completely irrational to anyone standing on the outside of it.
And so often, it looks incredibly ordinary.
A freezer.
A bag of milk.
A mother making sure her baby has something to eat tomorrow while everything she owned yesterday is going up in flames.
There will be so much to replace after this fire. Clothes. Furniture. Toys. Beds. All of those little things that make a house feel like home.
But when I look at that picture, I don't just see what was lost.
I see a mother standing in the aftermath, still doing what mothers have done since the beginning of time:
Nourishing. Protecting. Providing. Loving.
Her home burned.
Her world changed in a matter of minutes.
I can’t imagine the fear and panic in the moment.
And somehow, in the middle of the smoke and fear and devastation, motherhood remained exactly what it had always been.
Her babies were safe.
And Mama saved the milk. ❤️
*shared with the permission of the amazing Abbigail Helmer. What an incredible example you are, my friend.
