‘You’re doing such a good job’: A stranger tells a mom just what she needs to hear

This story is part of the My Unsung Hero series, from the Hidden Brain team. It features stories of people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else.

In 2015, Emma Carlson Berne had just had her third child. She loved her role as a mother, but she often felt consumed by it, like her life would never return to normal.

One day, when her baby was about three months old, she decided that her whole family — her husband, her two young boys and her new baby boy — should get out of the house and go to a restaurant.

They tumbled out of the car, ready with a diaper bag, books for the kids to read, a seat for the baby and bags of snacks. As soon as they stepped onto the curb, her baby was ready to nurse again, and Berne knew she had to get inside.

“I was already feeling pretty shaky,” she recalled. “So we all pile into the restaurant. We’re very messy, we’re very loud.”

Her baby thrashed around as she tried to nurse him under a blanket, and she worried he was about to cry. Berne began to feel hopeless.

“I’m feeling a little teary-eyed because, although we’re doing it, this is really hard,” she said.

A short time later, her unsung hero appeared: an older woman, who reminded Berne of her own mom.

“This woman came up … and stood there and looked at us. And I was sort of preparing that she was gonna say how cute the baby was,” Berne remembered. Instead, the woman took them all in.

“She said, ‘What a beautiful family.'”

Then she looked at Berne’s two young boys, ages 6 and 3, sitting quietly on Berne’s side of the table.

“And she said, ‘It’s not easy to sit at a table for a long time,'” Berne said. The woman saw her older children in a way few people seemed to, now that they were no longer in the infant stage. “Nobody ever noticed them anymore.”

Then the woman turned to Berne.

And she said: “‘Look at you, mom. You’re doing such a good job.'” The woman then gave them one last smile, and left.

Nearly 10 years later, Berne is still moved by the woman’s thoughtfulness, and has often recalled it with friends and family. If she could speak to the woman now, this is what she would say:

“Thank you for seeing all of us. And thank you for seeing me. Me, someone who wasn’t often seen during these early days, and someone who was sometimes feeling pretty invisible. And I have never forgotten it.”

My Unsung Hero is also a podcast — new episodes are released every Tuesday. To share the story of your unsung hero with the Hidden Brain team, record a voice memo on your phone and send it to myunsunghero@hiddenbrain.org.