My oldest son turned 22 this week.

Twenty-two.

And I’m over here wondering how the hell that happened.

It feels like I just learned how to hold a baby…how to burp him, how to rock him at 2 a.m. when I was too tired to stand. But at the same time, it feels like I’ve lived a thousand lifetimes as a mom. So many seasons. So many versions of me.

He’s the one who made me a mother.

The one who showed me that love could be bone-deep and terrifying and world-shaking all at once.

Since then, I’ve had seven kids. I’ve held one who never took a breath. I’ve grieved babies I never got to feel move inside me. And each one left me different. Each one gave me something. Each one took something too.

And then came the bonus kids, the ones who proved motherhood isn’t about blood. It’s about love. Showing up. Messy, imperfect, still-there love.

Two of my kids live with autism, each in their own way. They’ve taught me patience, resilience, and how love doesn’t always look the way the books say it should.

People warn you childhood flies by, that you’ll blink and they’ll be grown. But you don’t actually believe it until you look up and your baby is a man, with his own story, his own life. And you’re left wondering when you went from being a clueless twenty-something mom to a woman in her forties, carrying wisdom and scars and wrinkles you didn’t know you’d survive.

Here’s the truth nobody tells you: while we raise our children, they raise us too.

They stretch us.

Break us open.

Put us back together.

We are who we are because of them, because of their chaos, their beauty, their need, their love.

So yeah, birthdays are about the kid. But they’re also about the mom you became in the process.

Because motherhood isn’t one-way.

It’s a messy, brutal, breathtaking journey of growing up together.