Life

A Gift Worthy of the Mother of Your Children

How to write a love letter for the ages (and pair it with the perfect gift).

Updated: 
Originally Published: 
Jonathan Muroya for Fatherly

This story was produced in partnership with Pandora Jewelry.

The love you have for the mother of your children is obviously entwined with the love you have for said children, but it remains distinct no matter how long the two of you have been parents. It’s a love that deserves to be nurtured and celebrated in its own right, and Mother’s Day is the perfect opportunity to do so.

On Mother’s Day, as important as letting the mother of your kids know that you love her (which you hopefully do every day) is letting her know that you know her, something that can get lost when you’re both caught up in the whirlwind that is parenting. That’s why a well-written love letter, the kind of gift that signifies thoughtfulness and effort, makes a great Mother’s Day gift.

Loving the mother of your children and writing a great love letter for her are not the same thing. The former is an emotion, the latter a skill, a skill worth refining if you don’t find it easy to put your feelings on paper. That’s why we gathered some foolproof tips and tricks, simple guidelines that can help even the more ineloquent writers among us pen a love letter that will make this a truly special Mother’s Day.

Include a meaningful anecdote.

If you wanted a generic “I love you,” you could just buy a greeting card. But you’re rightly aiming higher, which means the more specific the better. That means that including an anecdote, maybe a memory from a long-ago trip that’s stuck with you or a recent parenting moment that reinforced why you’re lucky to have a supportive partner, is an absolute necessity.

Don’t write too little or too much.

“Love ya babe” scrawled on a card you picked up from the drugstore on the way home is not the move, but neither is a dozen pages chronicling every heartfelt thing you’ve ever felt about the mother of your kids. Keeping your letter to a page gives you enough space to be expressive but not obsessive. It was Shakespeare who wrote that brevity is the soul of wit, and he knew a thing or two about writing.

Make it about them.

When writing to the mother of your children, it’s only natural that, well, your children might come up. If you’re a parent who loves gushing about their kids—and what parent doesn’t?—it’s important to reign in that impulse. Your letter should be about the bond you both share, one that predates the arrival of your kids and exists apart from them. And let’s be honest: the kids are probably the focus of 99 percent-plus of your communication, which means a letter that just focuses on you two is refreshingly unique.

Invest in some decent stationery.

You could send your letter via email or scrawl it on a sheet of notebook paper stolen from your kids’ binder. But just don’t. Invest in a decent pen and some high-quality stationery. The nicer a physical object your letter is, the stronger its message becomes. And speaking of objects…

Pair your letter with a personalized gift.

Pairing your heartfelt letter with a heart-shaped box of chocolates picked up from the drugstore at the last minute doesn’t make any sense. Giving it alongside a beautiful, personalized piece of jewelry does. That’s why a Pandora charm bracelet is the gift that deserves to accompany your Mother’s Day love letter.

Unadorned, a Pandora bracelet is a beautiful piece of jewelry. Once you’ve added the perfect combination of charms from the hundreds of available options, it becomes the kind of gift that she’ll treasure for many Mother’s Days to come.

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