Noah Kahan Shares the &x27;Real Golden Rule&x27; His Mom Taught Him in New Book — Read an Excerpt! (Exclusive) Lizz Schumer, Noah KahanSun, March 29, 2026 at 1:00 PM UTC 0 Noah Kahan and his mom and the cover of 'What I Learned From Mom'Credit: Courtesy of Noah Kahan; Regalo Press New book What I Learned from Mom: 27 Celebrated Individuals on How Mother's Wisdom Shaped Their Lives by Jeffrey Dunn and Sherrie Rollins Westin (out March 31 from Regalo Press) features essays from personalities like Noah Kahan, Chelsea Clinton, Al Roker, Cindy Crawford, Kaia Gerber, Ken Burns and others All proceed...
Noah Kahan Shares the 'Real Golden Rule' His Mom Taught Him in New Book — Read an Excerpt! (Exclusive)
Lizz Schumer, Noah KahanSun, March 29, 2026 at 1:00 PM UTC
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Noah Kahan and his mom and the cover of 'What I Learned From Mom'Credit: Courtesy of Noah Kahan; Regalo Press -
New book What I Learned from Mom: 27 Celebrated Individuals on How Mother's Wisdom Shaped Their Lives by Jeffrey Dunn and Sherrie Rollins Westin (out March 31 from Regalo Press) features essays from personalities like Noah Kahan, Chelsea Clinton, Al Roker, Cindy Crawford, Kaia Gerber, Ken Burns and others
All proceeds from the book's sales will benefit Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit behind Sesame Street
Below, in an exclusive excerpt shared with PEOPLE, singer-songwriter Noah Kahan reflects on his mom's lessons
Kahan's fourth studio album, The Great Divide, is due out April 24 via Mercury Records. In support of the new album, Kahan will headline this summer's sold-out The Great Divide Tour
"You don't have to like everyone, but you have to be kind."
And that was that. Arguing with my mother, Lauri Berkenkamp, about the validity of this particular aphorism would be about as fruitful as mowing a lawn by picking each blade of grass with tweezers, one at a time. There is an understanding that by the time you'd plucked each plant from its root, the yard would have regrown, and there have to be better ways to waste time.
My mother's belief in kindness was too firmly planted to be disrupted by my challenges of "But what if they really suck?" and "Even if they're a serial killer?" I knew what she meant. Kindness was a sacred pillar in her worldview and an undeniable constant in the way my mother approached the world. She spread it out not only amongst four rambunctious and occasionally unkind children but also to the friends, neighbors and complete and total strangers that interloped through our lives in small-town New Hampshire.
Even at my most surly and my least kind, my mom would stay strong and provide a living and sometimes confounding example of the power of generosity and understanding. As I watched her navigate a world in which everyone deserved the benefit of the doubt, I would wonder, "How can everyone deserve kindness?" There are so many assholes. Why should I smile at the moron throwing his trash out of his car window and littering the forest? Why shouldn't I honk at the dipshit texting on his phone in the left lane going 15 miles under the speed limit? I couldn't understand it. An old poster in my elementary school classroom boasted the famous golden rule: Treat others how you want to be treated. In my head, I could only understand the logic of treating others the way they treated you. My mom, though, did not feel the need to wait for permission. She lived by her rule. You have to be kind.
Looking back, it was a very special and powerful form of kindness to endure the drone of my persistent and seemingly impossible dream. To sit and nod your head with approval as a 9-year-old boy loudly tells you, "I want to be a rock star." To listen to screechy, depressing "songs" come out of his bedroom, or the kitchen, or her bedroom, at full volume, out of key, every day, and to continue to let him believe in his naive dream. It was probably embarrassing to watch me hand out burned CDs to aunts and uncles, who would play along to not hurt my feelings but would scratch their heads at the title of my debut album, Death to the Lord, and wonder, What the hell does that mean? (By the way, I still have no idea, but I can understand why my parents wanted me in therapy from a young age.) My mom never told me, "You suck," which I probably did. She never told me, "This is annoying," which it probably was.
Noah and his momCredit: Courtesy of Noah Kahan
I would not blame my mom if she thought every hour of every day that I was never going to be a rock star, or a singer or even a working musician. I wouldn't blame her if she cut up the quarter-inch cables attached to the old Fender amp and replaced them with the schoolwork I never cared to do. It would have been a logical response to an irritating sound. Most people swat mosquitoes when they buzz around their heads. She never swatted my dream away. She didn't harbor any ill will at me for deciding not to utilize the opportunity I was born into, that she and my dad had worked so damn hard to provide us kids with. We were in the best school, in the nicest town, had a clear passage to any traditional form of success, and I decided I'd rather strum on my cherry-red Stratocaster. I'd like to think she saw incredible potential in my out-of-tune singing and morbid writing, but I think the early days of my dream existed solely because of her rule. It was the kind thing to do.
I like to believe she felt a sense of karmic justice when I actually started to get kind of good. I like to think she heard the first piece of music that had a clever rhyme scheme, or the first melody that got stuck in her head, and looked up toward God or whichever saint and said, "Told you! I was nice enough to endure it when he sucked, and now I've got his damn song stuck in my head!" I have never asked her about when she first realized I might have developed the talent to match my insatiable and almost religious passion for music, and if she felt partly responsible. She was. She was the lamppost and inspiration for me in so many ways. My mom is an extraordinary writer and the biggest music fan I know. I tried so hard to sound like the artists that she would listen to, imagining in my head my song coming up on shuffle and her listening to it like it belonged in a playlist next to Paul Simon, The Avett Brothers, or Crosby, Stills & Nash. I tried to write in a prose that seemed mature enough to exist on the same shelf as one of her bestselling books. I wanted to be good enough to satisfy the greatest musical taste I knew, and I wanted her to mistake my writing for her own.
Noah KahanCredit: Patrick MacCormack
She would give me advice on writer's block, on rediscovering creativity during the many times it eluded me and she would edit and evaluate my songs. Occasionally, during my mid-teens, I would be stuck on a certain word, unable to figure how to complete a rhyme while staying within the parameters of the larger lyrical concept. I would roll it around in my head and on my tongue for hours, literally banging my head against my desk until I could no longer think without my brain hurting. I would wander downstairs, distracted, and my mom would ask what I was working on up in my bedroom. I'd tell her I was stuck on a word to complete a rhyme and then I'd speak out the problem lyric to her. Almost instantly she would have the answer. I like to think she enjoyed the exercise of writing "with me," so to speak. That she enjoyed the teaching and the helping and the editing and the encouraging.
She taught English at the University of Vermont and wrote 13 books, so maybe her writing advice was just an extension of her training and expertise, the natural instinct of a highly trained professional who sees an overly critical amateur trying to skip the hard parts of writing and creating — to lend her hand and guide them through the inevitable, toward improvement and toward confidence. Part of me hopes she loved that partnership as much as I did, but part of me is sure that even if she couldn't stand it, she would have done it anyway. She was never partisan in her total love for me and my siblings, whatever wild dream it was we were chasing in those meandering teenage years.
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However, without any doubt, it was kindness and not passion that saw my mom through the "grind years" of my journey to becoming a full-time musician. Three times a week, after working a full day at the library, my mom would pick me up and drive me to one of the several local restaurants that offered locals a chance to play covers or originals at their open mic nights. Hanover, N.H., was a small town, and on weeknights, when the Dartmouth students were studying for their rocket ship classes or whatever, these restaurants were almost always completely empty, save for a few locals who seemed to want nothing more in the world than for the music to be turned down to an indecipherable volume and for the musicians to let them enjoy their food in peace. (Why they would choose to consistently eat out on an open mic night is beyond me, but I digress.)
My mom would sit in the back of the dark and noisy bars, focused so intently as I performed my cover of "Creep" by Radiohead or "Trouble" by Ray LaMontagne. She'd heard each about a thousand times but would sit and watch, nonetheless. She would afterwards tend to the wounds of my ego, when a record executive didn't magically happen to be eating at Salt Hill Pub that night, or when the sound of silverware on plates was the only reception to my performance. She would encourage me by finding a positive no matter how bleak I felt, and by unlocking the front door of her car, time and time again, to bring me to the next one. It must have been exhausting for her to work all day, be present and supportive to three other children and a various number of dogs and then to emotionally uplift a distressed 17-year-old singer-songwriter. I wish I could have been more grateful at the time.
Co-authors Jeffrey Dunn, former CEO of Sesame Workshop and Sherrie Westin, CEO of Sesame WorkshopCredit: Sesame Street Workshop
It wasn't until years later, after the record deal, the Wikipedia page, the "Oh shit, we f---ing did it!" moments that could I fully appreciate the kindness that carried me here. It wasn't until my mom was thousands of miles away from me that I realized how badly I needed that encouragement growing up. Sometimes, even thousands of people screaming the words to your songs can sound like a blank sheet of paper and an emptier brain. Sometimes, even Madison Square Garden can feel like an empty bar in Lebanon, N.H. When it does, I try and tell myself that if my mom could sit and watch me squeak out a Kendrick Lamar cover (I know) and drive me home on a Wednesday in the February dark, or the April slush, or the oppressive August heat without giving up, then I could find the strength to keep going too. I could use the proof of her love for me as a way to find my own love for what I was doing and could use that belief as a reason to keep going.
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Kindness doesn't cost us anything. I sometimes fall into thinking I am unworthy of even being kind to myself. That I should not give myself the benefit of sympathy or understanding, that life is a zero-sum game and if I have failed or lost then I am simply existing in the consequence of a cold and definitive world, and that painful feeling of failure is the result. Today, I try to remember the greatest lesson my mother ever taught me: Kindness should be a given. Kindness should be shown to the surly stranger on the highway, for who knows what tribulations they have been through in their day or week or life to lead them into your own path. There doesn't have to be a reason. In fact, when it feels least appropriate, or when you're at your most irritated, that is when kindness is most important.
'What I learned from Mom' by Jeffrey D. Dunn and Sherrie Rollins WestinCredit: Regalo Press
In a world that presents so many opportunities to judge and deny and disregard, I remember my mother's rule. Love you, Mom.
Excerpted from What I Learned from Mom: 27 Celebrated Individuals on How Mother's Wisdom Shaped Their Lives copyright © 2026 by Jeffrey Dunn and Sherrie Rollins Westin. Used by permission of Regalo Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
What I Learned From Mom is on sale March 31 and available now for preorder, wherever books are sold.
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Published: March 29, 2026 at 04:09PM on Source: MANUEL MAG
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