I love being a mother. With my children now 35, 32 and 28 and all with sweet partners in their lives, I still find being their mother to be what I do. I can no longer stop being their mother than I could stop the sheer fierce force of their births.

Each of these precious children was born at home. Each birth was a window to the divine, deeply transformative and dramatically terrific. I would not trade a moment of those hours, some blissful, some brutal – but every bit of it wildly wonderful.

And so the years have brought more of the same — daring, difficult, dramatic and just damn darling times as their mother. Every stage of being a mama is new. Just when I think I have figured out how to be a mother to a 3 year old, the next 3 year old comes along and needs a completely different approach. Just like with 30 year olds.

This path has stretched me, sometimes even to a breaking point. But, I somehow I manage to muster the strength and continue to attempt to master this role of a mother. Perhaps I never will totally grasp it, but I truly believe each of my children knows how I treasure the trying. It is my sheer joy, my own sense of the spiritual.