You have to get to the heart of a story through questions that will serve as warm-ups before diving into the ones that you hope will elicit something special.

Sometimes a singular response will lead you to ask a question that will draw something out: a buried tenderness, a hidden truth, a profound realisation. When it happens, it is in that moment that you know you have redefined the ordinary. Why? Because the story reveals something so honest and so true not just to the persons being interviewed but also to all of us, the ones watching too.

When Bailey’s asked us at Forward Forty Digital to produce a series of short stories for Mother’s Day, we knew we wanted the words and the emotions of the stories to direct the narrative. My proposal suggested no fancy sets, “let the stories carry the joy and tension points of the relationships”, I wrote. Of course, since this was branded content we had to find clever ways to introduce the product without being obtrusive.

We shot 7 short stories over one day and some of what we captured was tearful, others were matter- of -fact; all were deeply personal and valid. When you watch these videos, we hope you feel the same way about stories as the wonderful Ira Glass describes it: that narratives are the backdoors into a very deep place inside of us, and they can help us feel less alone.

Here are seven stories about mothering,

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