By Marianne Lincoln

To all our mothers, grandmothers, great grandmothers, mothers who were mothers, and those looking forward to motherhood, we wish you a wonderful day to celebrate the condition we call motherhood.

Motherhood comes with a broad range of emotions, the joy and fears of birth and its complications. The raising of children with the excitement of successes and the tears of losses. Baseball games, dances, picnics, diapers, laundry, dinners, emergency rooms, scrapes and scratches, ball gowns, birthday cakes, and barbecues, there are so many sides to being a mom.

Here is wishing you the best of times and the best of memories. Those of you who are experiencing the loss of a mother or a child, my heart goes out to you. My family just lost my niece on Friday, yes just two days ago. She, too, was a mother of young children, but cancer has no friends or family. So, to all of you in loss, here is a big hug.

I hope however you spend the day, however you became a mom, that you are celebrated and know how much you are appreciated, even when we forget to say so. Thank you, MOM!

(The photo is my great niece Serena who I just met for the first time yesterday.)