This is dedicated to my mother, whose career was to raise four children; my artist friend with the one-year-old son; my blogging friend whose job supports a family while she also pursues her own interests and develops a business; and to any woman faced with the challenge of being a mother and an individual:

She was a homemaker, but the home she made was filled not only with love, but with her constant forays into politics, books, board games, decoupage, etc. She loved her family, but she had an inner life, a tough mind, and when things got too kid-crazy around her ankles, she had a tendency to say, “One of these days I’m gonna walk out on all of you.”

That sort of declaration–and the fact that she never followed through on it–sticks in a kid’s mind, and not necessarily in an unhealthy way. What it said to us was that our mom was more than our mom, that there was more to life than us and dinner and dishes, and that, despite her yearnings for more, she was going to fight to fuse her selves into a whole.

–Jim Walsh, City Pages: Why Sylvia? Why Now?

I admire you all more than you will ever know.