Leslie Hughan was not a “typical” mom. She’d be the first to say it.

“I have kids who spend far too much time in hospitals to be typical,” Hughan wrote in a 2019 blog post. Two of her four children battled cancer. Another has cerebral palsy. She decided to leave her job in 2016 after her twins were born very prematurely.

“This is my life,” Hughan wrote. “It may not look like your life, and that is OK. If my life makes the masses uncomfortable or sad, that is not my problem, and I refuse to apologize for it. My life, my family, is beautiful.”

She did indeed lead a beautiful life, loved ones said. Hughan — a nurturing mother of four, a devoted wife, a communications specialist and a friend who always had a pep talk ready when needed — died on Dec. 1 of a pulmonary embolism. She was 41.

Hughan spent the entirety of her life in Maryland, most recently in Bowie. There, she raised her family and, in more recent years, started working for the communications firm Blue Wagon Group. Hughan studied communications in college, and it was her professional passion. When she started her blog — Momming: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly — she said that “writing is what I know.”

She wrote consistently there from 2019 to 2021, finding comfort in the regular practice of writing and the opportunity to share her experiences with medically complex children. Online, she advised other moms on how to survive long hospital stays and reflected on parenting her oldest daughter through the famously easy preteen years. She documented her efforts to “raise these people amidst chaos and help them transform into responsible adults.”

In person, it was much the same. Hughan was an outspoken and fierce advocate for her kids, and she was passionate about ensuring that the world accepted them and other people with disabilities, said her sister-in-law, Patty Hughan.

There was no stone that Hughan wouldn’t turn for her children, said friends and family, some of whom called her supermom. But even before the kids, “she always was a champion for the underdog,” Patty Hughan said.

Leslie Hughan’s story started in Baltimore on Feb. 23, 1983, when she was born to Robert and Mary Lou Beck. She grew up in Glen Burnie, and her life changed forever when she met Bryan Hughan on a high school band trip. She was in the marching band, and he was in the jazz band. She fell asleep on him on the bus ride home. “I was just done,” Bryan Hughan said.

Hughan went on to earn a bachelor’s degree from Hood College in Frederick. Her college years were some of her most formative — she met her best friends and was involved in just about everything.

Class president, dorm president, curriculum committee, “the council for this, the council for that,” said Judie Evans, one of Hughan’s best friends. Hughan was open-minded and charismatic, a natural leader who had a way of talking people into doing things, she said.

“She made people feel special,” Evans said. “She listened. She would focus. She remembered things, like if somebody had an event coming up. She remembered to check back in and ask how it went. She was incredibly supportive and giving.”

Hughan was the first in her friend group to get married and have children. Bryan Hughan proposed to her by dedicating Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” to the couple over the radio. At the end of the song, he pulled out the ring that Leslie Hughan already knew he had because she’d snooped around his room.

Her early engagement meant she was also the first to experience what would become a tradition of surprise bachelorette parties in her friend group. Hers was a New York City trip that featured a 1980s prom theme, said Maggie Hasselbach, another friend from Hood College.

Hughan welcomed her first daughter, Virginia, 15 years ago. A few years later, her son, Dexter, was born. And then came the twins, Celia and Benny, who were born at 24 weeks. She spent many weeks and months in and out of the hospital, helping her children find the care they needed.

“She became whatever her kids needed her to be,” Hasselbach said. “She knew exactly how to speak with the nurses, which kinds of doctors to ask for, the information on the monitors and all of that. She grew and expanded, emotionally and knowledgeably, into whatever her kids needed her to be.”

Tory Tanguay, another college friend, said Hughan was “the definition of a superwoman.”

“How that woman had still managed to keep it all together through the chaos, I will never know,” she said.

Bryan Hughan said it was mostly because he and his wife were able to find “humor in stupid places.” Laughter was the best medicine for them, whether from sharing a silly meme or hanging up a portrait of Vigo the Carpathian from “Ghostbusters” in their living room.

Advocacy was another outlet, he said. His wife would give someone a piece of her mind if she saw them parking in a handicapped spot without the proper decal. She tried to raise awareness about childhood cancer. And it always brought Hughan joy to help others going through similar challenges.

Charissa Thomas met Hughan at the hospital shortly after she also gave birth to twins with medical complexities. They quickly bonded, and when Thomas couldn’t produce breast milk, Hughan donated hers.

Hughan’s friends and family said they’ll remember her for those big and small moments — the times she took on challenges that seemed far too large with grace, and the times she said “I llama you” instead of “I love you” to her girlfriends.

Evans keeps coming back to the memory of spending a late night with Hughan a few years back, buying a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and watching a marathon of “The Office” at her house after the kids went to sleep.

Every time Michael Scott did something that really should have gotten him fired, they’d switch pints. As the hours passed, they’d spilled ice cream and dropped their spoons, but they couldn’t stop laughing.

The woman who made all the time in the world for her children, who took on serious issues with a resolve of steel, still made time for “stupid, childish fun,” Evans said. She was anything but typical.

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