There is a version of Mother’s Day that exists on the internet, and it involves pastel balloons, brunch spreads, and captions that read “my greatest adventure.” Beautiful, sure. But anyone who has ever tried to negotiate with a toddler at 6:00 AM knows that the actual daily reality of motherhood is a lot more chaotic, messy, and beautifully unpolished. It is a wild ride of intense love, deep exhaustion, and a fair amount of spilt milk.
Skipping the airbrushed narratives, this Mother’s Day, KitaParents asked seven local moms one very simple question: What does your mom’s life look like? The answers became “In Her Shoes: A Mother’s Day Series”, a campaign that gives us an authentic, POV-style glimpse into the daily routines of seven extraordinary women from completely different walks of life.
The concept is simple but incredibly powerful: by pulling back the curtain on their vastly different schedules, challenges, and little victories, we get to see that while our daily routines might look poles apart, the underlying heartbeat of motherly love is the same. It is a comforting reminder that no matter how isolated you might feel in your own daily chaos, you are part of a massive, supportive sisterhood.
Here is a look at how these seven inspiring Malaysian moms are making it work, one day at a time.
1. Farra Azeez
Farra’s day-in-the-life video shows us a deeply moving. It runs on routine, patience, and a kind of love that has learned to pay very close attention. As a mom to a child on the autism spectrum, her mornings look different from most, and she would not have it any other way. Her reel walks you through the structure that holds their world together, from the way she communicates, to the spaces she carefully navigates, to the quiet strategies that most people would never think twice about.
But what stays with you long after watching is not the effort, it is the joy. The kind that lives in small moments and tiny breakthroughs. The kind that reminds you, quite gently, that love does not need to look the same to mean the same.
Watch Farra’s full reel here:
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2. Nor Izzati
Nobody tells you about the mental tabs. Izzati, homeschooling mom and co-founder of Suci Cups, is running roughly forty of them at any given moment.
One minute, she is on the floor with her kids, fully present, answering questions and reading together. Next, her mind has quietly slipped to an unanswered message, a business decision, something that needed doing yesterday. And then, before the day is out, she shifts again into her role as a wife. Same woman, completely different headspace, over and over again.
What Izzati puts into words so well is something most moms feel but rarely say out loud: the hardest part is not the doing. It is the constant, unconscious switching. The hats change before you even realise you have put one down. Nobody warns you that motherhood is less about juggling and more about never quite getting to stop.
Watch Izzati’s reel here:
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3. Dr Erma A. Thani
Most of us think the school run is stressful. Dr Erma’s day involves actual life-and-death decisions, so let’s put that in perspective.
As a surgical trainee and mom, she lives between two worlds that could not feel more different, and yet she moves between them daily as if it is simply what you do. The operating theatre demands precision, focus, and nerves that do not flinch. Home demands something else entirely: patience, presence, and the ability to switch from scrub suit to pyjamas without losing your mind in between.
The best part of her reel? She handed the narration to her son. And if you want an honest account of what a superhero mom’s day looks like, it turns out a child’s perspective is exactly the right one. Equal parts wholesome and quietly devastating in the best way. What Dr Erma’s story really captures is the mental load that does not clock out when the shift ends. She carries the weight of her patients and her family at the same time, and she does it without making it look like a performance. She just shows up, fully, in both places, as often as she humanly can.
Watch Dr Erma’s reel here:
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4. Dr Nisa Khalil
Dr Nisa Khalil spent years training to care for other people’s children. Then she had her own, and everything she thought she knew got a little more complicated, and a whole lot more human.
By day, she is a paediatrician with a special interest in child development at ParkCity Medical Centre. By night, she is a mom to two boys, doing the same worrying, googling, and 3 am second-guessing that her patients’ parents do in her waiting room. The difference is she now sits on both sides of that table, and she will be the first to tell you that the second seat changed her completely.
When a worried mom walks into her clinic now, Dr Nisa is not just listening as a doctor. She is listening as someone who has been there too, who knows that asking for help takes courage, and that no amount of medical training quite prepares you for the particular panic of it being your own child.
Motherhood, she says, made her a better paediatrician. Not because it got easier, but because she finally understood what families are actually feeling when they walk through her door. That kind of empathy is not something you learn in a lecture theatre. You live it.
Watch Dr Nisa’s reel here:
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5. Adreanna
You would think a personal trainer’s day would be the most organised one in this lineup. And some days, it genuinely is. Other days, it is barely held together with good intentions and not enough sleep.
Adreanna is a personal trainer and mom of one, and her reel does not pretend otherwise. On the packed days, she is up early, back-to-back with clients until late evening, squeezing errands and responsibilities into whatever gaps remain, and running on a sleep schedule that is, by her own admission, a work in progress. On the slower days, things do not always go to plan either, and she is learning that this is also fine.
The lesson she keeps coming back to is one that no training plan can really prepare you for. Motherhood will humble your to-do list. Things will fall outside your control no matter how well you plan, and the most important skill is not discipline or consistency. It is knowing when to let go and give yourself a little grace.
Watch Adreanna’s reel here:
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6. Farah
Farah’s kitchen does not really have an off switch. It is part production space, part family dining room, and full-time controlled chaos, which is pretty much a summary of her life as a baker and mom.
She is candid about what that looks like day to day. Some days she feels like she has genuinely cracked it, running a business, raising her kids, holding it all together. Other days, the feeling is closer to “what on earth am I doing?” and honestly, both are valid, and both are real. No two days look the same for Farah, and she has made peace with that. The orders, the kids, the deadlines, the dinners, none of it follows a neat schedule. But she has also come to see that as the beauty of it rather than the problem.
What motherhood gave her, beyond the chaos, is a kind of love and a capacity for sacrifice she genuinely did not know she had. And despite the overwhelming moments, the flour everywhere, and the days that made absolutely no sense, she would do it all again without hesitation.
Watch Farah’s reel here:
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7. Sharissa
Four boys. Same age. All at once. If you needed a moment to let that sink in, take it. Sharissa’s day is exactly what you would imagine, and then some. Four personalities, four sets of needs, four packed bekal boxes, four everything, running on a schedule that has absolutely no room for improvisation. The school runs alone deserves its own documentary.
But what she wants you to know is not just how much there is to do. It is how she gets through it. Behind Sharissa is a village, a family who show up, help out, and make sure the boys are loved and cared for, even when she is running on empty. She is the first to say that motherhood was never meant to be a solo act, and she means it.
What strikes you about her story is not the logistics, impressive as they are. It is the gratitude. For the chaos, the milestones, the tiny moments that make the exhausting days worthwhile. She shows up every single day, loves endlessly, and keeps giving even when she feels like there is nothing left to give.
Overwhelming? Yes. Demanding in every possible way? Also yes. The most beautiful chapter of her life? Without question.
Watch Sharissa’s reel here:
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“In Her Shoes” did not ask these women to perform motherhood. It asked them to show it. And what they showed us is that across every profession, every family structure, and every kind of day, the love is always the same.
Happy Mother’s Day to every mom who showed up today, even when showing up was the hard part.
Want more stories like these? Head over to @kitaparents and @parenthood.my on Instagram, where the real conversations about Malaysian parenting never stop.
