This weekend, Mindy Kaling posted a snowy snap of her kids playing in the winter weather.
“The upside of this nor’easter is that my kids got to see snow and be in my home state for the first time,” Kaling captioned the sweet photo.
“They could hardly believe it. I sound like a bad greeting card, but it’s so beautiful seeing experiences from my own childhood through their eyes. The joy, the surprise. Sometimes it’s such a powerful feeling I want to cry. So yeah, I’m just that weird emotional Indian woman lugging a sled up the hill.”
Mindy Kaling recalls reading Hillary Rodham Clinton’s book “It Takes a Village” in 1995 and thinking, “Huh?”
“It’s about raising kids, and I didn’t understand it as a teenager because I was raised by my mom and dad,” Kaling told TODAY Parents.
RELATED: Mindy Kaling Opens Up About Secret Pandemic Pregnancy: ‘A Once in a Lifetime Type of Thing’
But once she was a mother, the actor had a daughter, Kit, 3, on her own in 2017. Two years later, she welcomed her son, Spencer, who is now 11-months-old.
“As a single mom it really does take a village,” Kaling said. “Yes, I am the parent of my two children — but there are all these other caregivers in the form of family, friends and nannies. I couldn’t do it without the village. Absolving myself of guilt for depending on others has been the biggest piece of advice that has helped me.”
Kaling leans on her father, Avu Chokalingam, who “comes over twice a day” to see the kids. The actor lost her mother, Dr. Swati Chokalingam, to pancreatic cancer in 2012. But Kit and Spencer see a piece of ther late grandmother through Kaling.
RELATED: Mindy Kaling Shares Hollywood Inspiration Behind Children’s Names
“When I was growing up, my mom labeled all the scissors. If she saw the kitchen scissors upstairs, she’d flip out,” Kaling recalled. “I’d be like, ‘Chill out. Who cares? It’s a pair of scissors.’”
But similar to Clinton’s book, the scissors all make sense to Kaling now.
“If I see someone in the kitchen with the living room scissors, I freak out,” Kaling laughed. “Random scissors are a symbol of chaos in my home. I can’t handle random scissors in different rooms. I’m exactly like my mom in that way. I need order.”