This past weekend, the guys and I drove to Wisconsin for my mother’s graduation. It was a little touch and go whether we’d all be going, as J started throwing up the morning before we were to leave. Luckily that only lasted about 8 hours, so we were able to head out together the next day as planned.

My mother immigrated to America as a young girl. My grandfather was a butcher in Brasil. Neither he nor my grandmother had much education. They came to America to give their children the opportunities that would not have existed in Brasil at that time. Life here was hard, since neither my grandparents spoke English. They both worked long hours of manual labor to provide for their 3 children, and my mother spent a lot of time on her own taking care of her younger brothers.

On Friday, my mom got her PhD. She’s going to be a college professor now! This is her 5th degree. It took her 14 years to get her bachelor’s degree. Then, 3 different Masters degrees. Getting a PhD has long been a dream for her, and I am so proud of her for pursuing it. It makes me tear up just thinking about how hard Mom has worked. She did it as a single parent. She left behind her extended family, her beautiful home, and all her friends to move with my sister and start over. I know there have been many days when she’s questioned what she was doing, and whether it would be worth it. But here she is, a doctor, with a job offer in North Carolina.

She is such an inspiration to me and I pray I can be as good a mother to my kids as she has been to me.