Happy birthday to Stephanie!

I’m a fortunate woman to know the joy of motherhood and the joy of adult children. And when I say “joy,” I mean just that.

It takes a while for the transition to occur…and I’ll speak for myself, and not the whole world of mothers here…for a long time I thought of myself in relation to my kids as “mom.” And of course that’s natural. That’s the beginning of the relationship, and for 18-plus years that was the defining role I experienced with them. And it continues, in the biological sense. Sometimes I slip into that mindset for a particular conversation or situation.

But mostly, now, I feel like we’re friends. And that’s a rich reservoir of emotion and experience.

And though I know that friendship between mother and children, mother and daughter, is not uncommon, it’s not a given. So I’m grateful it’s been given to me.

It’s an amazing thing to watch the flowering of adults, the only ones in the world that I’ve known so intimately since birth, and to be privileged to see their lives unfold, develop, mature…there’s an enduring bond that ties my heart to theirs.

Stephanie has been a gift to my life, the beginning of seeing the world through the eyes of a child, teaching me responsibility and forcing me to grow up in ways I couldn’t anticipate, until I found myself doing and stretching, learning because I was on the job and had to rise to the occasion, whatever the occasion might be.

She still teaches me, shares with me, makes me beam with pride.

She’s a daughter who is a mother, and a great one. She’s a daughter who is a friend, and a special one. She’s a daughter who is a woman, and an amazing one.

She’s my Stephanie, and a part of my heart that is walking around outside my body.

“Making the decision to have a child – it is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body. ”
― Elizabeth Stone