The night before a scheduled performance, singer Nichole Nordeman was struck with a realization.
"It just hit me out of nowhere," she said. "How did we get here?"
That surprising moment took place last year, the night before her son was set to graduate from the fifth grade. As she was preparing for her performance, she looked through photos of her son throughout various stages of his life. In an hour, she had written the song "Slow Down," a touching message from a mother asking her child to put the brakes on growing up.
"It just kind of spilled out of me, along with a lot of tears," Nordeman told The Huffington Post.
Nordeman, who has a 12-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter, ended up performing the song at her son's graduation last year. She has since recorded it and on April 29, she posted a lyric video for it on her Facebook page. As of Thursday morning, it has racked up more than 14 million views.
The video features family footage from Nordeman's peers, fellow artists and parent bloggers. The result is a montage of sweet moments.
"We just wanted to keep it feeling very homemade and just real life, not like we were out to make some fancy, big budget video," she said. "We wanted to record people that we know and love slowing things down with their kids."
When asked how she juggles the happiness she feels as her kids reach milestones along with the sadness in seeing them grow up so fast, Nordeman had a touching explanation of how she's felt as a parent.
"I think a lot of it is just surrendering to the inevitability that when you have a baby, you sort of sign up for the most joy you’ll ever know and the greatest heartache you’ll ever feel," she said.
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