Happy Mother's Day

The journey of a lifetime

“You’ll never be able to have children.” I was 19, a student at Ohio State University, sitting at the Medical Center listening to a ‘doctor’ talk about my irregular periods. Was he even out of med school? I don’t know how he got such authority. He was a kid by my standards today, who didn’t know what he was talking about, but I believed him.

I smoked my way through my 20s and 30s and then at age 37 finally decided to give up my Marlboros. During those years I experienced two miscarriages. But six months after quitting smoking for good, I got pregnant and knew this time it would stick.

“What’s his name?” The midwife asked as she placed that beautiful new human on my chest. “Michael Richard Burgisser,” I replied. “He sounds like a prince,” she said.

Two years later, I had Nicole Ruth, and just like that, life in my 40s became the rush of children, work, and homemaking. Life in my 50s was more exhausting than that of any mom who started in her 20s.

But I had a superpower: wisdom and humility, which comes with experience out in the world, steadied my footing. Of course, I didn’t get it all right, and I have some regrets.

A few years into motherhood, I realized there is no such thing as controlling all the situations, dramas, twists, turns, and temper tantrums.

I created a mantra. While chaos tore around me, I planted my feet solidly on the ground and repeated, “My children are happy, healthy, high-functioning adults. My children are happy, healthy, high-functioning adults. My children are happy, healthy, high-functioning adults.”

At a profound level, I knew it was not up to me what profession or life fortunes they would choose or encounter, but what I could do was visualize, and visualize I did!

Now they are at their own midlife in their early 40s. With children, spouses, careers, and yes, some chaos. But you know what’s special about it? They are nonetheless happy, healthy, high-functioning adults.

Happy Mother’s Day to my daughter, her mother-in-law, my soon-to-be-a-mom daughter-in-law, and her mother; to all the current and future mothers in the world, and to me. We did it!