A Mother's Song

Smile for a Saturday

‘Tis the season to gather with family.

The notion of family is a complicated one. We are born into families, but we also make them and choose them. We join new families through our life partners. And families can grow, with new births, and as siblings, children, and other relatives bring in their own partners and have their own children. Families also shrink and fracture, with death and through trauma and miscommunication.

But at the most elemental level, family is often created and centered around one of the strongest bonds of nature, that between mother and child.

Recently we shared a short film with our paid Steady subscribers about this relationship in a moment of tragedy, the death of a child. For this Smile for A Saturday, however, we are celebrating birth and life.

Motherhood, and parenthood more generally, is not an uncomplicated experience. And the very definition of what constitutes a family is changing. In this video, the genre-spanning singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile shares her story of becoming a mother and creating a family. It starts with spoken words and shifts into song. And it was recorded as part of a personal favorite institution, Austin City Limits.

This charming and thought-provoking experience made us smile, and we hope it does the same for you.