Spring in Northwest Pennsylvania is an amazing time. Everything is coming alive after what my daughter and I lovingly call "second winter" has finally passed. The trees are beginning to blossom, our tulips have bloomed and gone making way for my columbine buds, and the birds are nesting in the trees in the back garden. I love this time of year. There is so much new life all around us, it's almost magical.

It's Mother's Day weekend, and my oldest daughter has come to visit for a week.

As I am pondering this article and sitting at my desk by the window, I'm watching her color in a mendhi coloring book with her little sister, and I can't help but smile. It's been two and a half years since we've seen her and she's more beautiful than ever. My middle daughter came at Christmas with her two young sons, and I felt the same way. I keep kissing their faces and hugging them like I did when they were little girls. Words can't describe how bittersweet it is for me to see my children grow up into intelligent, self-sufficient, kind hearted, hard working adults.

The most accurate way to explain it would be to say that I am ever thankful that the sacrifices and decisions I made while they were growing up have come to bear such wonderful fruit.

Six months into my first freshman year, I married and became pregnant. It was a tumultuous marriage, and returning to school was simply not an option. I spent the next eighteen years working and raising my three girls. That is until I sat down one day and decided that I would pursue an Associates' Degree. As a single mother, I thought perhaps a Business Degree might eventually help me bring home a better income, so I could provide more for my children, but there was more than that. I wanted to show my girls that they could accomplish anything, at any time, if they so desired. Little did I know they had already learned some very precious life lessons just from watching me.

I trudged through my Associate's with minimal enthusiasm, trying to navigate university as a mature student raising my high functioning autistic preschooler and two teenagers. Algebra nearly killed me. Business and communications didn't truly interest me. I was determined to finish it and pressed on through the program when I sat down and thought about what I was really teaching my girls. It certainly wasn't the lesson I had hoped. Rather, I was teaching them that their dreams and their education weren't linked. Having been a writer since I was nine years old, my dream, prior to raising my family, had been to become a published author. Something in me clicked and that dream began to consume me again. I immediately changed my major as I entered my BA program.

With one year left to complete my degree in English and Creative Writing, and minoring in Literature, I am not only setting the example for my girls that I hoped to, I am also loving every minute of it. The love of writing that I temporarily set aside has rekindled into something unstoppable, and the writing is flowing constantly. But there’s more. My girls, ages 23, 21, and 10 are proud of me. I see my youngest daughter reading over my shoulder as I do my own homework, or hear her tell her friends how hard I work.My girls tell me they’re proud of me, that it’s my time, that they always knew I would finish my degree. I hear them speak proudly of me, their mom, and my goals to graduate and publish my work. They recognize that much of my writing is now inspired by the life I have lived and the life I gave up, and they are a large part of it.

We’re sitting here with my mother, who drove down from Ontario for the day. My mother who encouraged me over the years in the same way I have encouraged my girls to do and be anything they set their minds to. We’re reminiscing about my great grandmother who was an exceptionally strong, encouraging woman. We're thankful that my youngest was able to meet her great grandmother last Mother's Day before she went to Heaven. We’re missing my middle girl, who is about to have her first daughter and couldn’t make the trip to Pennsylvania.

Mother’s Day has a very different meaning for me now that I realize how my girls see me. I’m looking at myself with less scrutiny, and I feel more motivated than ever to press on, finish my degree, and pursue publishers. I was raised by a strong, encouraging woman, and I have raised strong, encouraging women. I feel blessed beyond measure.

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers and mother figures out there. Your strength, tenacity, and nurturing are an invaluable gift to this world.