Last week I wrote letters to my twin girls telling them their birth story.  The letters were a “homework” assignment for the biographies they are writing in school.

It was a very difficult process for me, given that the day they were born was one of the hardest days of my life.

For those of you who don’t know the story, my girls were born at 26 weeks and weighed 1 lb. 10 oz. and 1 lb 3 oz. at birth.  They had Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome.  When they arrived, they were in critical condition and we spent the next five, long months in the NICU at Primary Children’s Medical Center.

There is nothing that can prepare you for a life or death struggle with your child.  Now that time has passed and I look back, I know it was the relationship with my husband and the loving support of our family and friends that really pulled me through.

There is one part of the story that will always be in my heart.  It isn’t something I wrote in the letters to my girls, but it is something I thought a lot about as I wrote their stories, and that is the strength I gained from my mother and mother-in-law during my darkest hours.

When I looked at my girls, so tiny and frail, and my heart faltered, it was their strength that lifted me up and gave me the strength to hope.  Both women had such faith in God, even when I didn’t.

It is this strength I think about as Mother’s Day approaches.  I think as women we have a special ability.  We can find hope and wisdom even in the face of unimaginable odds.  We can nurture and sustain our loved ones in a unique and special way.  I am so lucky to have such women in my life.  I only hope someday I can be as wise and good as they are.

I remember my mother’s prayers

and they have always followed me.

They have clung to me all my life.

-Abraham Lincoln

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