Gabrielle Union perfectly sums up the first year of motherhood

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been a whole year since Gabrielle Union announced the birth of her baby girl. Since then, we’ve all had the pleasure of watching adorable baby Kaavia James grow, as well as seeing Union and husband Dwyane Wade raise her. This year hasn’t always been easy for Union, however, as she shared in a beautifully honest post on her daughter’s birthday.

“Scared to hold you,” Union wrote in her post on Thursday afternoon. “Scared to burp you. Scared to reveal I have no clue what I’m doing. Scared to go to work. Scared to stay home. Scared when you sleep. Scared when you wake up. Scared I’m not living up to some impossible standard of motherhood. Scared I’d lose myself. Scared I’d be exposed as a failure, as less than, not as good as, not as comfortable as, not as… anything.”

Yes, even gorgeous, successful Gabrielle Union experiences the same doubts about motherhood as so many of us. Because it really is hard.

“Now I understand why sometimes you’ll see moms at the airport or in Target just in tears,” she told People earlier this year. “You try to do what you can in the hours that you can. I may not be hitting it out of the park at work, at home, with her or with my husband, but that’s okay.”

For this birthday post Union shared a slideshow video of Kaavia’s first year, set to Bill Withers’ “Lovely Day.” She had also posted the lyrics of that song with her birth announcement post last year. We’ve seen most of those images before, but they’re somehow more moving in montage form.

Union went on to write about how her daughter helped her gain confidence in herself, too.

“But there you were, everyday, looking up at me, like ‘gurl, you got this!’ ” Union wrote. “When I let go of my fears of judgment and just did my best and recognized that my best would and could change from day to day and life would magically go on… Man, I finally allowed myself to just enjoy you @kaaviajames and relax into the peace of imperfection.”

We certainly couldn’t have described that first year of parenting better ourselves.