I would absolutely do it all again…in a heartbeat.

On this Mother’s Day, I realized something profound: all of my children are now older than this girl was when she earned the title of “Mom”.

I never felt like I lost out on life to be a mom so young. At least not until my own children started reaching that age, and I watched them have freedoms and options and experiences I had surrendered. That sixteen-year-old girl had ideas about what she wanted from life. She wanted to play college hockey, travel the globe, meet new people from different cultures, learn new languages, become an artist, and just GO and be free. My passport would have been so wonderfully dog-eared and colorful.

For him and myself, I had to let go of those dreams and choose a different adventure. One filled with beauty and love and growth and heartache and a depth of loneliness I didn’t know could exist. By twenty-four, I would be “Mom” to three children, and all those dreams would be nestled deep in the private corners of my truest self. My mothering heart was filled with the long, hard days of diapers and potty training and parent-teacher conferences. With snuggles and bedtime stories and little humans who loved me the greenest and the pinkest and the bluest.

Nearly thirty years later, here I am. I have a wonderful life, a fantastic marriage, a community of friends and family. I love the yellowest, the purplest, the rainbow. I have my first treasured passport that is slowly filling with stamps. I have become an artist, after all. I am learning a new language, meeting people from new places, and bringing them into my swelling heart. And those four beautiful humans, the ones whose lives were my first adventure, make me so very happy and proud and fill my heart with love and pride more than I ever thought was possible.

In just five months, I will gain a new title, a new name. A name I would give everything up for all over again. As I contemplate this most precious new title, Nana, I feel like I am being given a spectacular prize for a very long, hard, beautiful race well run. For choosing to keep running on the harder path when I had the chance to quit. For you, little child of my child, I would absolutely do it all again…in a heartbeat.