First-Time Mom Reads the Last of 3 Letters Left by Late Mother for Major Milestones (Exclusive)

A woman honored her passage into motherhood with a special memento from her own late mom.

Shannon recently became a mom when she welcomed her daughter. One of the youngest of seven kids in her own family, she was aware that something special awaited her on the occasion of this milestone — a letter from her late mom.

“I am one of seven. I am the second youngest, and life was crazy, but so sweet. I love being in a big family. We were always seen as a crazy family because we had so much going on with how many of us, and our life was just very busy,” Shannon tells PEOPLE.

“My mom was diagnosed with cancer, for the first time, when I was 2. Then she went into remission, and she didn’t have cancer for a few years. And then, she got re-diagnosed when I was 10,” she continued.

“The cancer was pretty aggressive, and so she did treatment for a few years, which was pretty intense. Then we got to a point where it just wasn’t working anymore, so the doctors gave her like the option to kind of stop trying stuff because they pretty much tried everything, and it was just continuing to spread. They had suggested that it would probably be a few weeks [that she had left].”

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The family was heartbroken. Shannon recalls conversations about the moments she wouldn’t get to experience.

“My mom’s biggest thing was that she just felt heartbroken that she wasn’t gonna get to experience some really big life milestones for all of us kids, whether that was graduation or having a kid, or even a championship game of a sports team,” Shannon continues. “She yearned to be there for us, just as she was in her life on Earth. She was just trying to think of ways that she could still get to experience it, in a way. And so she and my oldest sister sat down in her final days, and they just cranked out three letters for each kid.”

Shannon shares that each of her siblings had letters written for different occasions of life, depending on their interests and the season of life they were in at the time she learned she was out of options.

In the letters, “She talked about things that she loved about us and a ton of different stuff.”

“It’s just been so sweet, that when those seasons come that are just so hard without her, that we get this sweet reminder of her and a little bit of her wisdom, a little bit of her love, poured into us. It’s just such an example of who she was,” Shannon says. “She was just such a sweet, intentional mom. And so, for her to think 10, 20 years out into our lives, to want to still be there for something like that, it’s been such a powerful experience to get to have.”

Shannon’s three letters were for her high school graduation, her wedding day, and the birth of her first child. When she brought home her baby girl, it took her a minute to settle in before she was ready to open her final letter.

“It took me, I think, a week and a half to actually open the letter because I was so emotional. Don’t get me wrong, the postpartum hormones added a lot to it, but I just felt like I needed to be in a certain place emotionally to read this. One morning, I woke up, and the sun was shining through the window, and I just felt a peace, like ‘I think today I want to read the letter,’ ” she recalls.

“And I was just sitting there with my daughter. My husband was out making breakfast, and I opened it up to read it. It was obviously just so emotional, but the crazy part is that I feel like she — in every letter that I’ve read, it has been like so specific to what was needed in that time. Opening that letter after having a home birth and then getting to be at home with my baby and going through everything that we went through, and just like reading what she had to say was so sweet.”

She continues, “It truly felt like she was just sitting in the room talking to me again, which is all that my heart has been wanting in this season, to get to sit down and talk with her. There’s been such a sweet experience to get to read that, and I’ve opened it several times since, and just read it over and over and over again, because every time I feel like I get a new perspective on it when I read it.”

Though Shannon does share lifestyle content, she previously hadn’t shared much about her late mom and her grieving. It was after this experience, however, that she started considering sharing it with her audience.

“I actually sat on it for a bit. Then I was like, ‘I feel like called to share this experience,’ because it was true life-changing to get to have those letters, and I know that becoming a mom, I just even think to myself, ‘What are things that I could do so that if something unexpectedly happened that my daughter could have something later in her life, that she could look back on and like, get to read my words to her?'”

Shannon shared her video, where her sleeping newborn and her letter can both be seen on her lap. The caption reads, “I lost my mom when I was 12 years old, but she wrote each child 3 letters to open on ‘big milestone days’, & today I’m holding my first baby & opening my final letter from her. What an honor & blessing to have known a mother’s love like hers.”

The new mom was overwhelmed by the emotional responses to her now viral video. “Grief is such a connecting thing. I’ve connected to so many people and got to hear so many stories and got to talk to women and talk to little girls and talk to older women about experiencing life without having your mom. I also love sharing who my mom was, because she was such an incredible woman. To see people touched by who she was, and like by her heart, behind how she raised us, it’s just super sweet.”

It’s also meant a lot to her siblings, who have poured that same intentionality into their own families.

“My sister is just so intentional with her kids. She actually got the most time with our mom, and they were best friends. She got to have her first son with my mom around, and then her last two babies she wasn’t here for. You can just see in the way she interacts with her kids, the way she runs her home, she pours everything into them and it’s such a reflection of my mom,” Shannon says.

“My other siblings haven’t had kids yet, but it’s just such a conversation in our family to just keep that going and to just be able to pour into our kids the way that our mom did and to do those simple little things that don’t take much time, but it truly means so much. So I know that when they have kids, they’ll have a similar mindset.”