My eldest daughter and I have a birthday ritual. It is a ritual that symbolizes both the end of a deeply painful and dark journey and the beginning of one filled with love, light and laughter. You see, the road to motherhood was not an easy one for me. It was filled with years of disappointment, visits to doctor’s offices and repeated heartbreak.

In the day-to-day hustle that is managing a home, preparing meals, volunteering at school, staying connected to your husband, you can take motherhood for granted. Now that our daughter is a teenager, our lives are filled with athletics, hours of homework, an endless parade of friends and mountains of clothes that never get put away.

But there are moments that bring back vivid memories: a date on the calendar of what would have otherwise been the due date of a child that never came, or an article of a brave woman who bares her soul about miscarriage and it all comes flooding back. We were so terrified that this pregnancy would end like the others, that we barely acknowledged it until I was well into my second trimester. These moments, while painful, are also a reminder of just how lucky and blessed I am. After 5 years of trying to have a child, she came into our lives exactly 3 hours and 30 minutes before my birthday.

So, every year on November 9th at exactly 8:30 pm, I go into her room, wrap my arms around her and whisper to her the words I have whispered every year for the past 14 years, “You are the best birthday present I’ve ever gotten. I love you so much.”

Happy Mother’s Day.