Not too many daughters can say this about their mothers

My mom had me when she was 20, she had recently dropped out of high school and ran away from home to be with my dad. A year after I was born they moved into a duplex with my grandparents. Dad was a truck driver and Mom worked a couple of odd jobs before starting her 25 year career with Shaw's Supermarket. She worked lots of night shifts, I remember, going to work once my dad would get home from his day shift of work. She definitely worked her way up the ladder starting as bagger and eventually ended up in human resources where she was when they decided to close her store on Hogan Road in Bangor on January 31, 2009.

Anyone who knows my mom, knows her as a positive, upbeat woman who always smiles, always laughs and can make anyone laugh even if they don't want to. Even though she had just battled breast cancer and just lost her job, she was still laughing, she was still smiling, she was looking at what she had in life instead of getting bogged down at what she didn't have anymore. And instead of sitting back on dwelling on her unemployment, she took the situation as an opportunity, and opportunity to go back to school and get her G.E.D. and she did just that.

But that wasn't enough, she decided that she wanted to go one step further and go to college. That was 2 years ago, since then she's been watching her granddaughter 3 days a week, living off unemployment, she lost her father and has had lots of struggles. Many days she wasn't her bubbly, happy go lucky self. She was worried she would fail, she didn't have enough time to study, she was worried it was too much to watch Grace, but she didn't want to lose that time with her as well. She was worried about money, she was worried about grades, she was worried about letting her family and herself down.

Yesterday I got to watch my mom graduate college! I bet not too many daughters can say that about their mothers. I had never been so proud of her.

As she stood up on that stage waiting for her name to be called, that's when I realized how much she had just accomplished, how far she had come, how much she had been through just over the past 5 years.

Not only was her family proud of her yesterday, but I could tell my mom was proud of herself. She should be, she's come along way and when a roadblock was put in her way, she pushed right through it smiling and laughing the whole time.