There we are, 23 years ago. Me holding this little squish.

This week they graduate from Columbia University.

I could write an entire book about how parenting the Junior Gormans has transformed me into the best version of myself, and maybe someday I will, but for now, let’s just leave it with this: the gratitude and wonderment I feel, looking back from my vantage point into what is their the future, is immense.

Several weeks ago someone told me their favorite quote about parenting is, “However hard you think parenting will be, you’ll wish it was that easy”. I cannot emphasize enough how the me in this picture would not have even understood what that meant, and how much I deeply feel this in every atom of who I am today.

What will be ahead of me and my tiny baby, (joined by Junior Gorman the Younger just 20 months after this pic was taken), is loss so tremendous that it should have taken us all out. Ten years ago this August, the Junior Gormans’ father passed away from gastric cancer. 15 months later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer.

And yet, what will also meet us in the future is the transformation that loss provides, if we are willing.

And here we are.

No one wants to pay the price of the kind of life that loss creates, but the gifts can be equal to the pain.

Today I can easily say we are all fulfilling the promise that real joy provides.