Mother’s Day is almost here!

Is your family planning anything special?

Will you be seeing your children?

I have two wonderful children, a son named Charles and a daughter named Louise.

Recently, my daughter and I spent some quality time together at my home. She had not made it home for a visit, by herself, in a long time.

During our week together, we went shopping, visited with special  friends, got manicures together (never even taking a breath while still talking), and spent lots of time just reminiscing. These were precious golden moments of sharing for both of us.

Just last month, some friends of mine hosted a book-signing party for me to celebrate the release of my new book, Reaching for Your New Life: Healthy Recovery from Divorce. My daughter, Louise, was one of several people who helped me develop the book and was very supportive during the years that it took me to complete such an enormous project.

The party was to be a “graduation” of some sort, an acknowledgment of my work and an occasion to witness (and autograph!) the newly-printed results. I told my daughter how much it would mean to me if she could come and join this rite-of-passage celebration. I was deeply moved when she accepted and said, “Mom, I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

It’s a true blessing that even though my children have grown up and moved on to live their own lives, we are still discovering new ways to remain connected and to support one another.

I see so much of myself in my adult daughter and looking at her I’m reminded of the woman that I was at thirty-six years old. Louise would have been just a toddler back then, when I was her age, having no idea of the woman her mother had been before she came along.

It’s funny how our children often think of their parent’s lives as having begun on the day they were born! I guess that comes naturally, because a mother’s life is so instantly re-focused on the needs of her children. She transforms into the person that her children know and love right before their eyes, so the change is imperceptible. My children only knew me as “Mom.”

What a gift it is to get to know your children all over again after they’ve grown up!

At the same time, your children have the tremendous opportunity to know more about your life experience and how it’s shaped who you are as a person. The joys of parenthood are only part of the story!

For me, it’s felt like a chance to know and love my daughter all over again, and on a whole new level. I’m grateful she has chosen to get to know me also, and understand so many things we weren’t able to discuss or make sense of when she was a child.

I look at her now and I realize what a child I was myself, in so many ways, when I was her age… and yet my focus was on my husband and 2 children. It’s no wonder I struggled to make sense of my own needs, I was still figuring out how to be a woman when I was quickly swept into the role of wife and mother. It makes sense that I felt like I was starting my life from scratch after my divorce and then again in some ways after my children were grown. Who was I if not someone’s wife and mother? At first, I didn’t know how to be anything else. But I got the chance to find out.

It was this opportunity for learning and self discovery that led to my writing Reaching for Your New Life: Healthy Recovery from Divorce.

I learned many things during my unique journey, from a precocious southern debutant, then a young mother of 2, to my fairy tale adventure as the wife of a US Congressman, followed by a painful divorce and the challanges of single motherhood.

And now my path has brought me to another new role: I am the chosen friend of my adult son and daughter, to whom I’ll always be “Mom” but now I get to share with them even more.

It’s never too late to love your children or to give them the chance to know and love you.

How about your children? What kind of relationship do you have with them? What are you doing this Mother’s Day to celebrate?

I invite you to share and reminisce with me…and as a special way to celebrate Mother’s Day, As a gift to you, I want to answer just one question you may have for me…your most burning question… or hear about your relationship with your children. I’m here to listen.

You may call or email me anytime this week.

Sunday May 9th, Mother’s Day, is the deadline.

You may email me at support@drsararose.com

or call me at 704-525-1213.

Wishing all of you love and blessings on this Mother’s Day and always.

~Dr. Sara

Louise Rose with author Dr. Sara Rose

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