Today, I had the privilege of speaking at the Iowa Mothers Association Annual Meeting. I really had no idea what to expect, but I was pretty nervous about giving a 15-20 minute speech about my life and family. Thankfully, it was a small, humble group of super kind women, mostly past Iowa Mothers of the Year. They made me feel very loved, and I only cried a few times. I spent a lot of time writing it, so for those interested, here’s my speech. Thank you to my village – I share this Mother of the Year honor with you all!

Iowa Mother of the Year Speech
Iowa Mothers Association Annual Meeting
Des Moines, Iowa
April 6, 2024

Thank you all so much for inviting me here today. It is a great honor to be named the Shelby County Mother of the Year and the 2024 Iowa Mother of the Year. It means a lot to me to feel so loved and appreciated; however, I want to be clear… I did not get here on my own, and I am really, truly only a representative of the millions of deserving mothers out there. I look at my mom friends, my mom acquaintances, my actual mom, and I know that each mother out there who is trying her best to love and guide her children is deserving of a Mother of the Year award. There is a sad tendency in our culture to judge our success by comparison with others, but mamas, please don’t look at me or anyone else and think that you are not enough. We all have our strengths and our weaknesses; that’s why we need each other. We are all on the same team, and I hope that I can use this temporary position to lift up other moms. So as the current representative, on behalf of all the moms, I’m going to be the first to admit… none of us are perfect. I’m not only going to admit it. I’m going to embrace it! We don’t need to be perfect! I sure am not! So go ahead and take any mom guilt you have off your shoulders! Our kids don’t need perfection. What all kids really need is a combination of love and stability… a sense that home is a place that is safe because there are rules and expectations and also because they know that they will continue be loved even when they break those rules and fall short of those expectations.

To help me write this speech, I interviewed my daughter Georgia, who will turn eight next month, and she laid out some key factors for good mothering. She said…

• Good moms are always there for their kids
• They love their kids no matter what
• They take you to some fun stuff
• They teach you
• They take you to school
• They give you opportunities to learn new stuff and try new things
• They take care of you
• They encourage you, and when you do it, they tell you “good job”
• They try to surprise to their kids to bring them joy
• They give them responsibilities
• They let their kids know that they are loved

I asked her if it’s important for moms to be perfect, and she said, “No it’s just how they love you and help you through everything.”

So now that you’ve been introduced to my wise little sweetheart of an oldest child, I’ll tell you a little about me, my life, and the rest of my family. I have always had the belief, even when I was little, that I am one of the luckiest people in the world, and even after all of the hardships and difficulties of the past year and half, which I’ll get to in a minute, I still think that I’m one of the luckiest people in the world.

The luck started with growing on the family farm outside Harlan. Our house was up the hill 50 yards from my beloved grandpa George’s house. (I named my daughter Georgia after him). George’s son, my dad, Lee Kaufmann, ran the farm, and my mom, Julie Kaufmann, was a part time nurse and a full-time mom to me, my older brother Randy, and my younger sister and brother, Mary and Michael, the twins. I look back at the home videos of those days with four kids under five years old, and I know my mom definitely earned her 1992 Shelby County Mother of the Year award for enduring the noise and chaos and loving us even through our naughty moments. For instance…

I remember when I was in 2nd grade, I went through little bit of a violent phase… I may have punched another little girl at recess when she wouldn’t stop stretching out my new jump rope, and there was another incident involving some scissors… “stabbed” is hopefully too strong a word, but I may have “poked” a classmate with some scissors over a misunderstanding… I know who to blame when my own kids showcase their overly passionate dispositions because I know who they got it from, but anyways,

I was talking about how my own mom was an excellent example of loving us kids, even through the naughtiness… well, in addition to missing the Christmas party and talking about anger with the counselor, I remember part of my rehabilitation back into society was my mom writing me an encouraging letter about how to handle my anger in healthy ways, and she included some Bible verses about anger and forgiveness on little notecards. I can still remember that one of the verses she gave me was Psalm 103…

8 The Lord is compassionate, merciful, patient,
and always ready to forgive. He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

9 He will not always accuse us of wrong
nor will he keep his anger forever.
10 He has not treated us as we deserve for our sins
or paid us back for our wrongs.

11 As high as the heavens are above the earth—
that is how vast his mercy is toward those who fear him.
12 As far as the east is from the west—
that is how far he has removed our sins from us.
13 As a parent shows compassion to his or her children,
so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

So anyways, whether the pep talk is for us or our kids, these words of advice, encouragement, and forgiveness provide a solid model for choosing love over anger and forgiveness over retaliation.

My wise mother always says, “It’s a parent’s job to give their children both roots and wings.” The roots come first, and I can’t thank my parents enough for cultivating that solid ground for me and my siblings. Nowadays my parents still continue to strengthen that foundation for us and provide a safe place to land even now that we’re all flying around on our own wings.

First, I flew off to Iowa State and then to my first teaching job in Pella, but I loved home so much, that my husband Jason and I decided to come back to Harlan in 2014 to both teach at the high school and eventually raise our family in the place that raised us. Jason has since graduated from teaching engineering to being an engineer, but I just can’t seem to graduate. I love the classroom, and I love teaching my English, Spanish, and Theatre classes. It is in the Theatre world that I have had the biggest impact on increasing opportunities for my students and the community at large. When I took over the theatre program seven years ago in 2017, there was only one theatre opportunity a year, alternating between an after-school play and an after-school musical. With the help of dedicated students, I have since then created a Drama Club, a student-led Theatre Leadership Board, an International Thespian Society chapter, and a Theatre Performance class in addition to increasing the number of shows that students have the opportunity to participate in and submitting shows and acts for adjudication with the Iowa High School Musical Theatre Awards and the Iowa Thespian Festival, which has garnered our program multiple state and national awards.

Beyond high school theatre, I also founded the Harlan Community Theatre in 2019, which has grown and flourished into thriving nonprofit, providing a creative outlet and community-building experience for actors, organizers, and audience members both young and old. And I would be remiss if I didn’t take this opportunity to plug Our Town Auditions, which are coming up in ten days’ time on April 14th & 15th and which I am directing. (Audition info: www.sites.google.com/westerniowaarts.org/OurTown ) Our Town is one of those rare shows that has the potential to change the way you look at the world, and its enduring message of appreciating every little moment strikes a strong chord with me when I look back on what my family and I have been through.

In a beautiful circle-of-life type of way, nowadays, my husband Jason and I live in that beautiful house on the hill that I grew up in, and my parents have moved the fifty yards down the hill into my grandpa George’s old house, and just like I did, my kids can run down the hill to see them whenever they want. “Grandma misses me…” Emmett often says. “She likes to give me hugs” and then he runs full speed out the door, cowboy boots and shorts flying in the wind, to remedy the situation.

My son Emmett is now five years old, or as he once described his age, “he’s medium because he’s in the middle of big and little.” My spitfire middle child has a lot in common with his sometimes-hot-headed mother, but alongside his stubborn strong-mindedness, Emmett is the sweetest, most loyal little guy, and he fiercely loves his family. Lucky for him, he gets to see Grandma Julie all the time since she watches him twice a week during the school year. One day after babysitting him, my mom told me: I was telling Emmett that he was a good boy, and he said, “Not always, Grandma.” And she said, “there’s a Bible verse that talks about you, Emmett. It says, ‘God made everything, and he saw that it was good.’ And God made you so you’re good!” And Georgia piped up and said, “That’s one of our Bible verses at Sunday school!” And Emmett said, “Now it’s my verse too!”

This little story warms my heart and reminds me of how in so many ways, we are profoundly influenced by the generations that came before us. We’re not always lucky enough to know those previous generations, but their legacy is passed on through the love that they’ve invested in others, and that love continues to be passed down from loved person to loved person. I never got to know my mom’s mom or her sister, my mom’s aunt, whom I am named after, but I just recently learned that ironically enough, my namesake, my great-aunt, Ann Martin Willits was also an Iowa Mother of the Year. Unfortunately, both of these amazing sisters died of ovarian cancer before I was old enough to love them back. And that brings me back to how this last year and a half has been uniquely difficult. It turns out that in addition to gifting me an incredible legacy of a loving family, they also unknowingly passed on a serious genetic mutation that in a roundabout way led to me being interesting enough to be up here talking to you today. The BRCA 1 gene mutation predisposes me an incredibly high likelihood of breast cancer and also exponentially puts me at a higher risk of ovarian cancer. The chance of developing ovarian cancer for the general population is about 1%. For women with a BRCA 1 mutation, the odds of developing ovarian cancer are about 40-60% during their lifetime. And for the general population of women, the chances of developing breast cancer are about 12%. However, for people with a BRCA 1 mutation, the chances of developing breast cancer are a staggering 70% during your lifetime, which explains why I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the young age of 34.

It was a year and a half ago, October of 2022, and Jason and I were very excited to be expecting our third child after two years of trying to have another baby. I was only eight weeks along, and then we found out that the lump in my breast was cancer. They called me at the end of the school day, during 8th period, before the last bell rang and asked us to come down to the hospital as soon as possible. At first, when I knew nothing except the fact that I had cancer and was pregnant at the same time, it was hard to focus on anything except the raging panic. But gradually, over time, as I wrapped my head around each new curveball, I learned that this was doable. I have people and a God who loves me… What should I be afraid of? Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring, and we can’t change the future by worrying about it.  Sometimes, I try, but in my more wise moments, I’m aware that we can only do the best we can with the moments and circumstances we’re given, and the best thing to do is turn it over to God and let people help. One thing I’ve experienced over and over again is that a burden shared is a burden lessened.  

But for a month, we kept the baby and the cancer a secret as we prepared for surgery. I savored the normalcy that I knew would soon have to end. I was afraid to let people know. I was worried that cancer would become my whole personality. I was afraid that no one would talk to me about anything else and that all the things I loved and was passionate about would cease to matter. And telling people made it real. Little did I know then that sharing my journey with others would be what made it bearable and gave it purpose. We finally let the cat out of the bag in November of 2022, and the outpouring of support and prayers was immediate and overwhelming. One of the most helpful things that someone told me came from a fellow breast cancer survivor as I absolutely broke down in a Zoom meeting full of strangers.

She said, “You’re a teacher. Use this! Use this to teach people how to get through hard things.” So I have done my best. I used my public CaringBridge journal entries to be share my journey with my friends, family, students, acquaintances, coworkers, and anyone else who cared enough to know. There’s nothing like facing your own mortality to make you wax philosophical, and I suddenly found I had a lot to say.

After my first mastectomy surgery in December of 2022, they discovered that mine was an aggressive cancer that had already spread to two lymph nodes, making it stage two with a double-digit likelihood of coming back.  So they recommended chemotherapy, starting in January. There was just so much going on at once… surgery recovery, waiting for CAT scan results to see if the cancer had spread to other parts of my body, continuing to teach full-time, chemotherapy, hair loss, lymphedema prevention, musical auditions/rehearsals for the high school show I was directing, being pregnant, and just the uncertainty about everything. The day after Christmas, I got the best gift: clear CAT scan results. The cancer had not metastasized to other parts of my body, and I got to stay at stage 2 and focus on prevention of recurrence. So I continued chemotherapy to wipe out any microscopic cancer cells that may have escaped the surgery. Things were going well in January and February, but then in March and April, things started to get harder and harder. It started with a cough that got worse… and worse. For weeks. I was eating 20-30 cough drops a day. I became unable to take a deep breath. If I took anything more than a shallow gulp of air, I would start coughing. If I moved, I would start coughing. The list of simple things I couldn’t do without becoming completely exhausted and out of breath was getting ridiculous -- passing out papers, walking to the bathroom, getting out of a recliner. It was worse at night.  It got so bad that I’d crawl to the bathroom because it was easier than walking, and when I got to the bathroom, I’d cough until I threw up. I was 8 months pregnant, and I was wondering how I was supposed to deliver a baby if I was incapable of taking a full breath.

My lowest point was exactly one year ago today -- April 6th, 2023. I was supposed to get my 7th round of chemo treatment on that Thursday morning, but when my angel of a nurse saw how much I was struggling, she insisted that get wheeled over to the emergency room to get checked out. I was happy to go. I ended up in the ICU at Methodist Women’s Hospital for six days while they tried to figure out what was happening to me.  After many ultrasounds, chest X-rays, an echocardiogram, blood transfusions, breathing treatments, other drugs, and other tests, the doctors finally discovered I had a rare form of pneumonia caused by a common fungus in the air that most people have fought off without issue by the time they are three or four years old; however, with my weakened immune system due to the chemo, it was just more than my body could handle on its own. But with the help of antibiotics, steroids, and prayers, I was soon feeling so much better… and just in time! I got out of the hospital on Tuesday, and our high school show opened that Friday! Fast forward less than a month later, and I gave birth to my strong, beautiful baby boy, Jonah Alfred Weis, with no complications. He and I rang the end-of-chemotherapy bell together that July. He was with me at every treatment -- 6 on the inside and 10 on the outside. He has no health issues, and he’s now a delightful, thriving 10-month old who just took his first steps and is getting into everything! He loves his brother and sister and mom and dad, and we all love him right back. Every day, I’m incredibly thankful as I fill his bottle with donated breast milk given to us by amazingly generous, caring women, some of whom are long-time friends and others who are simply kind-hearted strangers who know what it means to be part of the village that raises the child. Lord knows, I’ve had huge village to help us through this.

At the beginning of school this year, I completed 28 rounds of radiation in the mornings before school each day during the first six weeks. I had my second mastectomy surgery over winter break, and with the exception of a couple more surgeries, lots of ongoing daily medications, and still way too many doctor’s visits, things have mostly returned to normal, and I’ve mostly settled back into a routine. Life seems ordinary again, and I think a lot less about all the “what if’s.” Life seems so normal that I get mad at myself when I realize I haven’t stopped lately to really appreciate being alive. The things we take for granted even when we’ve had big reminders not to! I couldn’t take a deep breath. I couldn’t easily stand up and walk across the room. How easily I forget to thank God for the amazing everyday miracles of being able to walk and breathe. I guess we all need reminders. I’ve learned a lot on the journey so far, and I’ll wrap this up with a few key takeaways that I periodically need to be reminded of...

• First, God keeps having plans that are better than mine.
• Second, when I’m going through something hard, I just need to focus on the step in front of me, not the whole staircase.
• Third, to quote 17th century writer John Donne (because I teach British Literature), “Affliction is a treasure, and scarce any man hath enough of it.” When we’re comfy, we’re stagnant. When we’re challenged, we grow; we lean on God and connect with others because it’s the only way to get through it.
• Fourth, gratitude, gratitude, gratitude.
• Fifth, we are blessed to be a blessing.
• And finally, nothing worthwhile is easy, but with the help of God, our friends, our family, and our community, we can all do hard things.

Thank you for being part of that circle. God bless you all.