Hilary Duff’s recent Instagram post about parenthood is striking a chord with many moms and dads.
The “Younger” actress posted a poem by Rachel Zucker on Instagram on Thursday. In the caption, she wrote that her costar Peter Hermann told her about the poem. She explained that the poem resonated with her, especially since she sometimes spends weeks away from her 5-year-old son, Luca, for work.
“Tears started falling down my face at the last four lines and still do when I read it,” she wrote. “Motherhood is the greatest gift I have ever received.”
Here’s Zucker’s poem, titled “Hours Days Years Unmoor Their Orbits,” in full:
Tonight I’m cleaning baby portobellos
for you, my young activist.
Wiping the dirty tops with a damp cloth
as carefully as I used to rinse raspberries
for you to adorn your fingertips
before eating each blood-red prize.
These days you rarely look me in the eye
& your long shagged hair hides your smile.
I don’t expect you to remember or
understand the many ways I’ve kept you
alive or the life my love for you
has made me live.
Duff wrote that she shared the poem because she thought her Instagram followers would find Zucker’s work “as moving” as she did, and she was right. Many people commented to thank her for sharing the piece.
Back in 2012, Duff offered another emotional description of what motherhood is like for her.
In an interview with Parade, she said her “heart grew” as soon as she met her son.
“Everybody always talks about it, about how you don’t know love until you meet your baby, and you really feel that,” she said. “There are no words. It was a really wonderful surprise.”
