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Motherhood inspires amazing transitions. And, by the following year, I had relocated us to my home state of Minnesota, closer to family, where I could leave corporate life and become a stay-at-home working mom.

On 9/11, and the days that followed in ashen air, I was struck for the first time by how much our children balance us. My daughter sang and danced and giggled in the living room as ambulances flew past our window to the hospital row just behind us. It was jarring to me, and surreal. But did keep me more emotionally balanced than I would have been.

Eventually I was interviewing a Muslim high school student for Lerner News Hour website about what he saw fleeing school with classmates that day in the shadow of the World Trade Center -- and the reactions he started to feel from fellow students when news came out that Muslim extremists had been responsible. In the midst of our emotion-laden phone conversation, my two-year-old daughter excitedly insisted I needed to see that she had gone "poo-poo in the potty."

Sometimes, particularly in the Thinking stage, we spend so much time focused on the stress of single parenting that we forget the amazing blessings that come with children. We do face emotional and financial hurdles that don't magically disappear. We do feel sorrow that our children don't have everything that we would like to give them. But by and large, as 9/11 reminded us, we are here to live and experience and love and connect as long as we can. And our main job as parents is to give our children the tools to do the same. Nothing else matters nearly as much.