Over Mother’s Day weekend, social media and phone lines alike were flooded with the same sentiment: “Love you, mom!” But people didn’t stop at thanking just their own moms this year, instead opting to shout out all of the incredible mothers in their lives, which for many, meant celebrating a current or former partner who’s a mom to your kids.
President Joe Biden similarly shared a message both for his own late mother and for his wife First Lady Jill Biden, writing a message of love so sweet and simple to the latter that we were instantly reminded how important her role as mom to Biden’s kids has been throughout their relationship.
Jill Tracy Jacobs met Biden just three years after the 1972 car crash that killed his first wife Neilia Biden and their 1-year-old daughter Naomi Biden, severely injuring young sons Beau and Hunter Biden.
Jill knew she wasn’t just dating Joe Biden, but his two sons too, and she writes in her 2019 memoir Where the Light Enters: Building a Family, Discovering Myself that it was her intense love for those young boys that led her to famously turn down Biden’s proposal four times before saying yes.
“I was surprised by how much I enjoyed getting to know them, and though I had been a little hesitant about dating someone with kids, I found myself excited when I got to see them.
I realized during those months how happy I was spending time with the boys,” Jill Biden writes. “I knew that marrying Joe wasn’t just about him. It was about Hunter and Beau, as well. They had endured the loss of one mother already, and I couldn’t risk having them lose another.”
“After all they had been through, I could never risk hurting them again,” she continued. “I had to be 100% sure that if Joe and I got married, it would be forever — for Beau and Hunter’s sake.”
When Biden proposed the fifth and final time, he told Jill that he needed a definitive answer within 10 days — left then on a trip so she could deliberate.
“Over the next few days, I thought about my life — what it had been so far, and what it could be. I loved Joe. I adored the boys. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing them,” she wrote. “I knew that he and the boys had my heart, and we were too intertwined now to protect ourselves from each other. Marriage license or not, we were already a family.”
Happy Mother’s Day to the love of my life and the life of my love, Jill. pic.twitter.com/5NPg2XrqcC
— President Biden (@POTUS) May 9, 2021
In other words, she said yes — and the rest is history. For this year’s Mother’s Day celebration, President Biden kept it short and sweet when addressing the woman who’d come in and become a mother to his two boys and stood by his side ever since: “Happy Mother’s Day to the love of my life and the life of my love, Jill.”
Jill Biden is now the proud mother of three kids: the late Beau Biden, Hunter Biden, and daughter Ashley Biden. But she became a mother for the first time when the Biden family needed it most, and it’s clear that they’ll never forget it.
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