63 Inspirational Quotes for Struggling Moms: Encouraging Words to Get Mom Through Hard Days

Motherhood is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It’s the most rewarding, too. Those of us that set out to be the perfect mother will quickly realize that it’s impossible. You could do 1,000 things right in a day for your children and may focus on the one thing that went wrong at the end of the day.

Mom Guilt and Tough Days

When we looked at the 10 things stay-at-home moms struggle with most, mom guilt was one of them. A working mom feels guilty for splitting time between her children and her work. A new mom feels like she can’t keep up with everything the internet says she should. The single mom feels bad about everything she can’t provide on her own.

Note: This post may contain affiliate links, which means if you buy from my link I might make a small commission. This does not affect the price you pay. See the full affiliate disclosure here.

There is so much pressure in raising successful human beings. After all, it’s the most important work in the world. Even the best moms have tough days and we could all use a little encouragement. I’ve put together some inspiring words to help mothers out during difficult days. The hard days when you feel like you can’t do one right thing. Use these inspirational quotes to lift you up when you need some encouragement through motherhood.

Using Quotes for Encouragement

There have been many beautiful words spoken on motherhood and the trials that we face. Use these strong mom quotes as a reminder that you are not alone and that others are facing similar issues. They have gotten through it and so will you. Women have an incredible ability to find strength within themselves even when they don’t know they have it. You can find yours with the help of kind words like those below and support from your family and friends.

I like to keep inspirational words as the background on my phone or printed out by my desk. You can also bookmark this page and use these words when you’re having a hard day. Make sure you get the support you need from those around you too. Motherhood can feel lonely but you are never really alone.

Quotes for When You’re Struggling in Motherhood

Here are some helpful quotes for when you are facing struggles in your motherhood journey. Read these for relief, support, and connection to those who have gone through what you are now. So many people have written about their own mothers and motherhood. It’s great to use these words as resources for comfort.

“There’s something really empowering about going, ‘Hell, I can do this! I can do this all!’ That’s the wonderful thing about mothers, you can because you must, and you just DO.” Kate Winslet
“I think every working mom probably feels the same thing: You go through big chunks of time where you’re just thinking, ‘This is impossible — oh, this is impossible. ‘ And then you just keep going and keep going, and you sort of do the impossible.” Tina Fey
“Not everything you do needs to be perfect. Being present is the best gift you can give your children.” Home As We Make It

quotes for when you're struggling as a mom

“There’s no way to be a perfect mother and a million ways to be a good one.” Jill Churchill
“There’s no love more intense than the love we have for our kids – and where there is intense love, there is also intense fear lurking beneath the surface.” Arianna Huffington
“Rest easy, real mothers. The very fact that you worry about being a good mom means that you already are one.” Jodi Picoult
“Mothers are not the nameless, faceless stereotypes who appear once a year on a greeting card with their virtues set to prose, but women who have been dealt a hand for life and play each card one at a time the best way they know how. No mother is all good or all bad, all laughing or all serious, all loving or all angry. Ambivalence rushes through their veins.” Erma Bombeck
“The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly – indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection.” Arianna Huffington.
“When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself, and once for her child.” Sophia Loren
“Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” Meryl Streep
“Successful Mothers are not the ones that have never struggled. They are the ones that never give up, despite the struggles.” Sharon Jaynes

“When you in a hard moment, take a breath, pause, and look around at the beauty that is your children.” Home As We Make It
“Caregiving is something that needs to be better valued in our society.” Annie Dean
“Motherhood brings you to your knees in a way that doesn’t leave room for you to judge others. It makes you see that there’s no ideal — a constant struggle, constantly compromising, but ultimate love.” Maggie Gyllenhaal
“She quietly stepped out of the race she never wanted to be in, finding her own lane and proceeded to win” Anonymous
“A mother’s love endures through all.” Washington Irving
“If evolution really works, how come mothers only have two hands?” Milton Berle
“I like to think of motherhood as a great big adventure. You set off on a journey, you don’t really know how to navigate things, and you don’t exactly know where you’re going or how you’re going to get there.” Cynthia Rowley
“Being a mother is learning about strengths you didn’t know you had, and dealing with fears you didn’t know existed.” Linda Wooten.
“It’s ok to be grumpy sometimes, to have bad days to struggle, to make mistakes, to say the wrong thing, feel overwhelmed and under-appreciated, to be out-of-sorts and sort-of-over-it all. It’s ok for us big humans, and it’s ok for our little humans, too. After all, we’re all humans, right? How else will our little humans learn that it’s okay to be human? Remember, we’re imperfect humans growing imperfect humans in an imperfect world, and that’s perfectly okay.” L.R. Knost
“The greatest glory in living lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fail.” Nelson Mandela
“Don’t compare your chapter 1 to someone else’s chapter 20.” Anonymous
“There are two kinds of days: Good days and character builders.” Anonymous
“Relax. Nothing is under control.” Adi Da Samraj
” Being a mother has been the most challenging and the most rewarding position I will ever hold.” Cathy Shaffer
“The art of motherhood involves much silent, unobtrusive self-denial, an hourly devotion which finds no detail too minute.” Honore de Balzac

Quotes to Remind You of Your Strength as a Mother

You might need to be reminded of just how strong you really are as a mother. Look at what you went through just to bring these little humans into the world! Use the quotes below for strength when you need to.

“Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws.” Barbara Kingsolver
“To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.” Maya Angelou
“It doesn’t matter how old you are, or what you do in your life, you never stop needing your mom.” Kate Winslet
“The term ‘working mother’ is redundant.” Erma Bombeck

“A mother’s love for her child is like nothing else in the world. It knows no law, no pity, it dates all things and crushes down remorselessly all that stands in its path.” Agatha Christie
“We have a secret in our culture, and it’s not that birth is painful. It’s that women are strong.” Laura Stavoe Harm
“Mother’s love is the fuel that enables a normal human being to do the impossible.” Marion C. Garretty
“Having kids — the responsibility of rearing good, kind, ethical, responsible human beings — is the biggest job anyone can embark on.” Maria Shriver
“There is no role in life that is more essential than that of motherhood.” Elder M. Russell Ballard
“I can imagine no heroism greater than motherhood.” Lance Conrad
“A mother’s arms are more comforting than anyone else’s.” Princess Diana
“It is at our mother’s knee that we acquire our noblest and truest and highest ideals.” Mark Twain
“Even if the whole world was throwing rocks at you, if you had your mother at your back, you’d be okay.” Jojo Moyes
“Motherhood is the strangest thing, it can be like being one’s own Trojan horse.” Rebecca West
“I have two young children, and I will say that motherhood is its own peak, just like in the process of writing: one climbs and is continuously moving with each book. Becoming a mother is the greatest connection I’ve ever felt to being spiritual.” Jhumpa Lahiri

Quotes to Remind You of the Beauty of Motherhood

“A mother’s body remembers her babies-the folds of soft flesh, the softly furred scalp against her nose. Each child has it’s own entreaties to body and soul.” Barbara Kingsolver
“My mother is so full of joy and life. I am her child. And that is better than being the child of anyone else in the world.” Maya Angelou
“Your body alone is a miracle. A maker of other human beings. A vessel of life and love.” Home As We Make It
“When you look into your mother’s eyes, you know that is the purest love you can find.” Mitch Albom??
“A mother is your first friend, your best friend, your forever friend.” Unknown
“We are born of love; Love is our mother.” Rumi
“Motherhood is the biggest gamble in the world. It is the glorious life force. It’s huge and scary – it’s an act of infinite optimism.” Gilda Radner
“All that I am, or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.” Abraham Lincoln
“Life began with waking up and loving my mother’s face.” George Eliot
“All I am I owe to my mother.” George Washington
“Motherhood: All love begins and ends there.” Robert Browning
“A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.” Washington Irving

Quotes for the Sleepless Nights

“There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.” Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Mothers don’t sleep. They just worry with their eyes closed.” Nitya Prakash
“A mother’s arms are made of tenderness, and children sleep soundly in them.” Victor Hugo
“A baby will make love stronger, days shorter, nights longer, bankroll smaller, home happier, clothes shabbier, the past forgotten, and the future worth living for.” Pablo Picasso
“Babies are always more trouble than you thought- and more wonderful.” Charles Osgood
“Nothing in life will ever make you as happy, as sad, as exhausted, or as incredibly proud as “You blink and they are toddlers. Then teens. And then they are parents, resembling you once were. So soak it all up. Hold them in your arms as they fall asleep. Read that book they requested for the tenth time. Snuggle in tight when all they want to do is hug you – feel that small body against your own. Embrace the exhaustion. The hard days. The overwhelming. Because although at times you might go a little crazy, motherhood is an incredible journey filled with immeasurable love and happiness.” Happily Ever Elton
“When your eyes are heavy and you are rocking your crying baby, just remember that this moment is temporary. Sleep will come and so will the day that your baby doesn’t need you to rock them to sleep anymore.” Home As We Make It
“He knows not his own strength who hath not met adversity.” William Samuel Johnson
“Tough times never last, but tough people do.” Robert Schuller
“Sleep is like the unicorn—it is rumored to exist, but I doubt I will see any.” Unknown

Quotes About Motherhood

There are so many beautiful quotes about motherhood to help get us through hard times. I hope some of these have been helpful to you and your specific situation.

We all feel guilty at one time or another as mothers. It’s the nature of the beast. But it’s important to remember that we are all doing our best, and sometimes our best looks different than somebody else’s best. As long as we love our children, hug them tight, and tell them we love them every day, we are on the right track. What is your favorite motherhood quote? Let me know in the comments below!