There’s no question that becoming a parent has stretched you beyond limits you ever thought possible. You are busier now than you ever were in your life. You manage to survive on less sleep than you ever thought humanly possible. You have been stressed, worried, upset in new ways and to new heights.

But of all the ways you have been forced to expand, one is the best and most beautiful: Your ability to love and to feel. “My heart has stretched to a capacity that I didn’t know about,” the actress Jennifer Lawrence recently explained about becoming a mom.

How perfectly said. Did you know you could cry during a TV commercial before? (this one we linked to on Instagram recently will do it). How quickly did you realize you were willing to die for your kids? Or do things for them you never thought you’d do for anyone else?

And, as some of you have likely noticed, that capacity for love extends beyond your family. Suddenly you feel this expanded, enormous capacity to love, to connect to all living beings, all parents. You now notice the mom struggling to get a stroller up some stairs, and you rush to help. The parents with a crying baby on a plane don’t bother you, and instead you feel intensely for them, for their struggle.

Your kids have given you so much. They have quite nearly given you a heart attack on many occasions…but they compensate for this by giving you a much bigger heart. They stretch you, they expand you, they make you better.