I still remember the physical feeling of it. It wasn’t just sadness. It was panic, longing, and helplessness. There was this constant ache in my chest because someone I loved was hurting and I couldn’t fully get to her.
At the time, I was raising two very young children in Florida when my mom was diagnosed with cancer. My mom was living in Canada, and I had just returned home to Florida after traveling to be with her for my grandmother’s funeral. The very next day, my mom called with the news of her diagnosis. Everything changed very quickly after that.
I remember immediately thinking: How do I get there? How do I help? How do I do both?
But I had an eight-month-old baby and a three-year-old at home. Anyone who has raised little kids understands how physically all-consuming those years are. Even leaving the house can feel like a production. Suddenly, I was trying to navigate early motherhood while also feeling this overwhelming pull to be with my own mother during one of the hardest moments of her life.
It felt impossible to fully be in either place.
It’s something many women quietly live with: You’re caring for the people right in front of you while also trying to hold concern for someone you love somewhere else. You’re making snacks, answering emails, loading car seats, sitting at soccer practice, picking kids up from school, and underneath all of it is this constant emotional current running through your body.
At the time, I kept thinking I needed to do something tangible. That instinct has always been part of who I am. When people I love are hurting, I want to show up somehow.
So I went online looking for a way to send comfort to my mom. I found flowers and fruit baskets and candy, all thoughtful in their own way, but for this particular moment, none of it felt quite right to me. I kept thinking: What do you send someone who is sick?
The answer for me was obvious: chicken noodle soup. It was what my mom always made for me growing up. Soup meant comfort, care, and being looked after. It meant someone slowing down long enough to nurture you. But at the time, there really wasn’t a way to send that kind of care from far away.
My mom passed away just six weeks later from lung cancer.
After she died, I could not stop thinking about that moment and why there hadn’t been a way to send a gift that felt appropriate for someone going through something so difficult. The idea stayed with me and would wake me up at night. Eventually, while raising my kids, I started trying to create something myself, initially delivering soup and comfort packages out of my minivan to people navigating illness, grief, and other difficult moments when they could not physically be there for someone they loved.
In those early days, I was literally driving packages to the post office with my kids strapped into car seats in the back. I remember negotiating with postal workers to let me pull around back because I could not unload boxes and unbuckle babies at the same time in the Florida heat. Every afternoon became this routine of snacks, packages, drop-offs, and trying to hold everything together.
Looking back now, I realize it was never really about the soup itself. It was about what soup represents to people. It’s warmth, familiarity, comfort, and care. It’s a way of saying, “I wish I could sit next to you right now, but since I can’t, I want you to feel loved anyway.”
And honestly, I think that’s something so many families are trying to figure out now.
Modern motherhood often feels like living in constant tension. We’re balancing work and caregiving and parenting and friendships while families are spread farther apart than ever. So much of life happens through screens now. We text. We FaceTime. We squeeze phone calls into school pickup lines and grocery store runs.
We are constantly connected, but many of us still feel deeply helpless when the people we love are hurting and we cannot physically be there.
Caregiving is rarely something we do alone. My friends became part of my village in ways I still carry with me. Sometimes support looked big, but often it was small. It was someone checking in, someone helping with my kids, or someone noticing I was struggling before I even had to say it out loud.
I was never very good at pretending I had everything together, and I think that openness helped carry me through grief and motherhood at the same time.
There are still moments, even now, where I think about how badly I wanted my mom during those years of raising young children myself. Becoming a mother made me understand my own mother differently. I suddenly saw all the invisible ways she had cared for me my entire life. And maybe that’s why the smallest gestures matter so much. It’s not because they fix grief or illness or loneliness. They don’t. It’s because they remind people they don’t have to carry hard things alone.
Sometimes love looks big and dramatic. But more often, I think it looks like someone finding a small way to show up anyway, even from far away.
Marti Wymer is the founder of Spoonful of Comfort, a company that sends soup, meals, and care packages to people navigating illness, grief, caregiving, new parenthood, and other difficult life moments. Marti lives in Park City, Utah with her husband and business partner, Steven, their beloved Newfoundland and St. Bernard dogs, and occasionally their young adult children when schedules allow.