How Han Solo’s struggles in Last Shot hit me right in the mom feels.

The first I saw of Daniel José Older’s Last Shot was an excerpt in the Del Rey Sampler I was given at Emerald City Comic Con. In the excerpt, which takes place early in the book, Han Solo is awakened miserably early in the morning after having fallen asleep on the couch with his two year-old, sleep regressing son. The groggy former General stumbles toward the kitchen in search of a much-needed jolt of caffeine and immediately steps on a toy (clearly a GFFA analog to a certain brick-based building system known widely in Star Wars circles). I was on the hook with that excerpt and couldn’t wait to read the rest.

Because from that moment, Han Solo was every parent I have ever known. He was certainly me. Fumbling in the dark, too tired to think, trying his best just to put one foot in front of the other and make it from moment to moment: Han Solo was living my experience as the parent of a small child.

And I was lucky. My son was actually a pretty good sleeper his whole life; my nights of sleeplessness at his behest have been few and far between, mostly due to illness or the unexpected arrival of new teeth. Still, Han Solo’s groggy swearing in that scene gave me one of the most relatable moments I’ve seen in Star Wars. And I’m sure I’m not alone.

As I followed Han Solo farther into this story, my means of identifying with his experience of parenthood became deeper, more raw, and more upsetting. Because the galaxy’s favorite scoundrel is terribly afraid he isn’t cut out to be a parent. Boy, did that resonate.

Because isn’t that how every parent feels at some point? Here you are with this tiny little bundle of perfection who relies on you for literally everything; the moment is bound to come when you feel a little over your head. Whether it’s the four A.M. sleep-deprived, tripping over toys stumble to the cabinet for Tylenol, the midnight calls to the nurse hotline, a loss of patience with a tantruming child who doesn’t yet know how to communicate, or the first questions on heavy subjects like death and trauma, every parent I know has felt out of their depth at some point or another.

It is very clear in this book that for Han, these moments of timorousness feel like moments of failure. And the feeling you are failing your child is one of the worst feelings there is. He feels like he’s failing at every turn, every mis-step leading him farther and farther toward the conclusion he wasn’t cut out to be a dad.

“Two years in and no matter what, nothing he did was right. He brought Ben a toy blaster from Burundang and he was encouraging his violent side; took it away and the boy wouldn’t stop crying. He tried to replace it with a build-a-space-center set and there were too many small pieces Ben could choke on. The worst part was, it wasn’t like Leia was nagging or just inventing stuff to one-up Han; she was right about all of it…. Every time she pointed out some potentially unhealthy or obviously lethal thing Han was doing, it was like—of course! It was right here in front of him all along”

If I had a dime for every time I was told something I’d given my son was the wrong thing: a choking hazard, not age-appropriate, etc. I could pay all our way to the next Star Wars Celebration. I don’t know of a parent who hasn’t experienced this kind of crisis on some level and Han Solo’s experience of it is heart-wrenching.

The fact of the matter is: Han in the era of Last Shot is living a life beyond his wildest dreams. And when someone is living in a previously unimaginable reality (even when it’s a reality of unimaginable happiness) that means they are living in a reality they are wholly unprepared for. Han Solo never imagined himself a husband or a father, so he has no frame of reference for how these things operate.

When Leia reminds him of this, saying: “You didn’t exactly have any good models of fatherhood growing up,” it barely bolsters his confidence. That line is given to us in flashback in Last Shot, as Han reflects on it a year later, he feels as though he “still had no idea what he was doing with no sign of improvement” and that, “One thing was perfectly clear, though: He wasn’t meant to be a dad.”

I’m not sure I have ever met a parent who didn’t feel like this at some point.

The fact of the matter is: he’s actually doing pretty great! He’s actually a wonderful father; it’s just that the things he sees as mistakes are more material and more abundant than he is mentally set up to handle. He says near the end of the book, “I feel like nothing I do is right and all I want is to be out where I know how to do things.” As a smuggler and as a General, Han had gotten used to successes and even qualified successes feel better than failures.

And the desire to be a good parent can magnify even the smallest shortcoming.

So when Leia tells him, “No one knows how to be a parent before they are one, not really. But you try. And then you fail and you figure out a better way. That’s what this is. There is no one way,” she manages to wipe away a layer of his self-doubt for the first time in their son’s short life. “It felt like someone had finally opened an old dusty window inside him and now the sunlight was pouring through.”

It took Leia’s acknowledgement that every parent struggles, that every parent finds themselves guessing, muddling through, and stumbling, to let Han see that he was doing just fine. But the readers can see it all along.

All of this fear and self-doubt about his skills as a parent comes alongside beautiful portrayals of Han Solo as a loving, caring, nurturing, doting father. In that early sequence—the one from the sampler—he awakens with little Ben’s foot in his face because they fell asleep on the couch watching cartoons. Ben starts to cry and almost immediately stops when Han picks him up. Ben falls asleep on his daddy’s shoulder. He greets Han via holocall with an enthusiastic, “Dada!” and asks when he’s coming home even though the expedition has only been gone for a day or two.

Everything we see of the relationship between Han Solo and his little son, Ben, is that of a loving, connected family.

The mere fact that Han is worried so much that he’s failing is actually a huge sign of success.

Journalist and author, Stephen J. Dubner, who co-wrote the book Freakonomics (which was later turned into a feature-length documentary film) was quoted as saying:

“…if you go to the store and buy ten parenting books, that’s probably not going to really help the kid that much, but the fact that you’re the kind of person as a parent who cares enough to go and buy ten parenting books— even if you don’t read them—that probably means you’re a pretty good parent.”

In other words: the fact that a person is worried about being a good parent is enough to say they probably already are.

That includes Han Solo. His boy loves him, his wife loves him. He is a thoughtful and devoted and present father who cares a lot about doing right by his little boy. And that hit me right in the feels. Because sometimes that’s all we have as parents. All we have is love and time and a desire to do better, but for my kid, at least, that seems to be enough. For Han Solo’s kid, it’s clearly enough as well. The love between them is palpable whenever they’re together on the page in Last Shot.

When Han says to Leia in the closing passage of the book, “I just want, no, I need to be back with you and Ben,” we’re there for the moment he comes to realize (with his wife’s help) that love and effort, presence and care, connection and devotion are the best things he can give his son; that simply by virtue of his trying so hard to do right, he is a far better parent than he gives himself credit for being.

And that’s a lesson I think a lot of us could stand to remember.