A year ago tomorrow I became a mom.

And three days later, it was taken away from me.

A lot of happened in a year, good and bad, high and low. But ultimately what happened for me is that I got to re-invent my life.

I believe in fate, but I also believe that you have to make the right decision or choose the right path to be where you're supposed to end up. And so I was given the opportunity by one of my favorite people in the world to think about life outside of Ithaca. And every move after that as been because of me.

I used to think I was strong because of what I dealt with and went through while I was trying to have a baby. I wasn't. Not really. I made a decision and just stayed on that course. That was actually the easy thing to do.

The hard thing....the strong thing...was to give up. To move on. To rebuild.

A year later, I have a job that I love, that I am challenged at, that makes me want to pull my hair out sometimes, but where I see that I'm making a difference.

My friends who were important to me in Ithaca are still important to me -- 200 miles haven't made a difference.

I hope that Takesha did the unselfish thing and found a new home for Cooper (or Tristan as she was calling him). Plain and simple, she was incapable of taking care of him financially. And I hope that decision gave her the opportunity to re-envision her life. That she's pulled her shit together and that Brooklyn is happy and secure and has a better mother today than she did a year ago.

I know I'll never know if any of that happened for sure, but on the occasional times I think about him, those are the only thoughts that can make me not think about him all the time. Because I may have only been his mother for three days, but in those three days, I imagined his whole amazing life.

I couldn't let tomorrow go by without thinking of him.