Nine months ago, a title like that would’ve given me the ick. Not because I wasn’t looking forward to being a mom, but because I never could have fathomed this need to justify that I love being a mom.

You see, whether scrolling through an endless feed of videos or chatting with moms in person, the conversation around parenthood is overwhelming negative. Nearly everyone tells you how hard it is going to be, how much your life is going to change, how tired you’ll be…the list goes on. And it starts the moment you get pregnant! If I had a dime for every “Oh you think you’re tired now? Just wait!” I’d have enough to fill Charlie’s college fund.

It’s like we’re expected to resent our children and slog through life as parents. So when you end up actually loving it, it’s like something is wrong with you. The truth is I LOVE being Charlie’s mom. I feel more like myself than ever before, and I have the sweetest baby boy who lights up my whole world. Yes, there are hard days here and there, but there is abundant joy and rightness that covers those hard moments.

I almost feel guilty for loving motherhood as much as I do. Which doesn’t make any sense. When people ask me how I’m doing and I smile and say, “I’m doing really great, actually! Motherhood is treating me so well,” the look on their face is usually one of disbelief. Disbelief that I’m out and about, that I’m wearing makeup, that I even have the energy to smile.

Tell a seasoned mom that your 2-month old sleeps through the night and they’ll tell you it won’t last. Tell a fellow new mom in the trenches that your 2-month old sleeps through the night and you’ll feel like a jackass when they say theirs doesn’t yet.

But here’s a universal truth: your happiness doesn’t need to come with a disclaimer.

That list earlier? About how hard being a mom is, how your whole life changes, and how tired you are? It’s all true. I also know so many women who have struggled with postpartum depression and anxiety. And we need to be able to talk with each other when life is hard. But we also need to be able to share our joy without shame.

Motherhood aside, I think this is part of a larger societal issue that I like to call the social currency of complaints. When people ask how we’re doing, we like to say how busy we are, or how tired, how crazy work is—you name it. I don’t know when social interaction became about bragging rights for who has it worse.

What would happen if we flipped that and started normalizing joy? What if we could talk about our happiness without feeling like we’re either out of place or bragging? Yes, hard times exist. There will always be people around us who have it worse or better than we do, and we always need to have empathy and tact. But I have a hunch that if we started reaching for joy in our conversations, we just might find more of it around us and in ourselves, too.