A year ago I blogged on Mothers Day weekend while my family was driving in from Toronto to be a part of our daughter's college graduation. We had a magical weekend together and since then our son has also graduated from college and now one lives in Romania and the other in Canada. I guess we are now the preverbial empty nesters which all my friends and family warned me would be awful but I have to be honest...I kinda like it. I feel guilty writing that as if I don't miss them, or love them to death, because of course I do.  On the other hand there is a kind peace that you feel in your heart when you know your kids are highly functioning, happy, fulfilled young adults enjoying life in the worlds they have chosen for themselves. It's the greatest freedom imaginable to know you've done a good job as a Mother and they are going to be just fine without you.

Now that I'm the Mom, I wonder if that's how my own Mother thought? Did she live long enough to feel that sense of accomplishment? Did she ever look at us three girls and think "Damn I did a good thing here, they are awesome"? My Mom will have been gone for twenty five years this September after being taken from us by breast cancer at fifty-one. Hard to believe it's been twenty five years and I'm still so pissed off.  Dreaming up PINK Cart and changing the color of trash cans across the U.S. one home at a time has gone a long way in increasing breast cancer awareness AND has been very therapeutic for me. I choose to believe that my Mother is in Heaven looking down on the three of us girls and feels peace and freedom in the knowledge that she did a good job and we are just fine without her.

To all of our friends I wish you and the women in your lives a very happy Mothers Day.

~Jo-Anne