Songfacts®:

• Brandi Carlile sings about being the parent of a little girl on "The Mother." However she also covers the topic of parenthood from the other side - as a daughter – on this song - another By The Way, I Forgive You track.
  
  "I wouldn't minimize the broader concept of what our parents are to us, and what we are to our parents," she told Billboard. "Your parents are your first love, and they won't always be here. They're going to leave you, and there's a very important lifelong forgiveness that needs to take place about that concept."
• Carlile watched both her parents lose their mothers in 2017. What she observed had a major impact on this song. She explained to NPR:
  
  "I watched both my parents lose their mothers last year. It was really interesting, because throughout the process of growing up, I listened to all of their grievances and gripes about their mamas, the things that kept them from answering the phone sometimes and all that stuff. And then as soon as those women were gone, it was like all memory of any of that immediately just evaporated, and it was all funny stories and good things. There are people that could criticize the way that we that we react towards our loved ones when they’re gone, and say that we make them inhuman or perfect - but then, there is the argument to be made that suddenly we see things for real for the first time."