Scary Mommy’s Favorite Badass Mom Moments Of 2025

Take their neighbors, classmates, and community members? Not on their watch. Moms around the country dedicated much of their year to protecting children and families in their communities from unlawful deportation. There was the group of over a dozen moms arrested while protesting outside Broadview Detention Center in Chicago. There was the mom group who organized a “walking school bus” to get children to school safely if their parents feared being targeted by ICE. And there were countless moms around the country who protested, offered supplies and legal aid, and made sure their communities stayed together, some of whom we profiled back in November.

Misty Copeland, who rose to massive fame when she became the first Black principal dancer at the American Ballet Theatre in 2015, performed her final show in 2025. After 25 years with the company and an unfathomable amount of positive change in the world of ballet, Copeland said one of the most special parts of her performance was that it was the first time her 3-year-old son, Jackson, saw her perform on stage.

Kari Thorp, a mom in East Bethel, Minnesota, was walking out her front door to meet her 6-year-old daughter as she got off the school bus. Her eyes snagged on the wheel well of the bus — there were flames inside it. Thorp quickly alerted the bus driver, Rick Gratton, and the pair of them got all 22 elementary schoolers unloaded and safely to her porch before the bus was engulfed by the fire.

In 2020, 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery was murdered for being a Black man jogging in a suburban Georgia neighborhood. His mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, vowed then that she would get justice for her son. Even with cell phone video footage of the murder, it took until 2022 for the three men involved to be convicted of murder. And in November 2025, an appeals court upheld the hate crime conviction, stating that any reasonable jury would conclude Arbery’s race was the factor that led to his killing.

Scary Mommy spoke with Cooper-Jones earlier this month about all she has done in the five years since her son’s death to change the world that took him from her. She founded the Ahmaud Arbery Foundation to fight systemic injustice and create safe events and spaces for young Black men. This year, she became an honoree of the Adidas’ Honoring Black Excellence initiative.

Jessica Rozen was at the Chanukah by the Sea event at Bondi Beach when two gunmen opened fire and killed 15 people in a suspected hate crime targeting the Jewish community. Rozen told Guardian Australia that when the gunshots began, she started frantically looking for her son and husband who were in a different part of the celebration, but she noticed a little girl all alone close to the line of fire. The mother dove on top of her and covered her with her body.

In cell phone footage, you can clearly see how close one of the gunmen came to her hiding place. But you can also hear her saying, “I got you, I got you. We’re gonna stay here, and we’re gonna be nice and safe.” Rozen stayed with the girl, comforting and protecting her, until she was reunited with her father.

In February, Colorado Rep. Brittany Pettersen went viral for bringing her 1-month-old newborn with her to the House floor to vote “no” against a budget plan she said would slash healthcare for Colorado children and increase the cost of living. The budget still went through, but Pettersen became the illustration of how little our nation cares to support new parents with parental leave.

“I rise today with my newborn Sam, who’s just 4 weeks old. Unfortunately, I wasn’t given the opportunity to vote remotely after giving birth, but I wasn’t going to let that stop me from being here to represent my constituents and vote no on this disastrous Republican budget proposal,” she said.

Pettersen is now working with other lawmakers to pass a bill that would allow new parents in Congress to vote remotely in the 12 weeks following birth.

Babies love it, some adults love to hate on it, but there’s one undeniable truth about Ms. Rachel’s voice — she’s not afraid to use it. The children’s entertainer, well-known to parents, became a household name this year as she faced intense backlash for speaking publicly about the genocide in Gaza, specifically how children there have been affected. She was honored as one of Glamour’s Women of the Year. At the ceremony for honorees, she wore a dress embroidered with the art of Palestinian children, and used her acceptance speech once again to share their words, as she said, “because they’re more important than mine.”

Beloved choreographer and director Ellenore Scott took to Instagram back in October to share that her fourth Broadway show, Ragtime, had taken the stage. The very next day, she gave birth to her first baby, a son named Ford. Moms — who else could pull all of this off at once?

Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce is one of the greatest sprinters of all time, a retired Olympic track and field athlete representing Jamaica. So when she pulled up to the starting line of the parents’ race at her son Zyon’s school, you know all the other parents were mentally preparing to eat her dust. I love that she let herself shine in this moment instead of holding back.

In August, there was no escaping this haunting image of a mother running barefoot towards the scene of a school shooting at Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis. The photo was captured by Minnesota Star Tribune photographer Richard Tsong-Taatarii, who shared in an Instagram video about the photo that the woman was reunited with her child moments after this picture was taken.

The image took on a life of its own, and became emblematic of parents’ worst fears coming true and their desperation to keep their children safe from gun violence.

A mom, known only as Marina, logged herself giving birth as exercise on the workout tracking app Strava (and yes, she was absolutely right to do so.) To her we say, “What’s it like to be an icon?”

The internet couldn’t stop talking about our collective new respect for Cara Buono’s Karen Wheeler in Season 5 of Stranger Things. When faced with the most hellish thing she’s ever seen — a towering demogorgon with rows of teeth — she doesn’t back down. She just puts herself between her daughter and the monster with nothing but a broken wine bottle in an attempt to save the little girl. Earlier this month, Buono told Scary Mommy she still has that iconic wine bottle.

Myriam Bénard Lafontaine is a regular mom whose video went viral this month, and it’s easy to see why. In it, we see Myriam wearing her infant daughter, Senna, while she practices singing a Christmas arrangement with her choir. Senna is clearly enthralled with the whole thing. Commenters shared over and over how healthy this must be for a baby’s developing mind, and how wonderful for a young mom to be able to do what she loves with her little one in tow.

Moore won Best Female Actor in a Comedy/Musical Motion Picture – Musical/Comedy this year at the 82nd Annual Golden Globes. In her acceptance speech, she shared that early in her career, a producer called her a popcorn actress — someone who could be in lucrative movies that are entertaining enough, but she wouldn’t ever be truly great. She believed it for many years, until the script for this winning role hit her desk and she thought, “Well, I’ll try.” She concluded that in moments when we feel like we’re not enough, it’s important to put down the measuring stick.

We love a brutally honest Kylie Kelce sound byte, and this moment on her podcast when she came for C-section stigma hit every C-section mom right in the feels. Because really, it’s not anyone’s business how a baby comes out — it just matters that they do.