Today I want to wish Happy Mother’s Day to all my fellow Moms on the Web and off the Web. The most incredible job I’ve ever had the great honor to hold is being a Mom. There is nothing more important than this job.

My hero Erma Bombeck said this of motherhood, ”

“It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.”

When I speak at conferences, no matter what the topic of my talk is I always start out by telling my story of returning home to my daughter  when she was just a mere 11 weeks, 2 hours and 9 minutes old.

My boss, news director Bruce Whiteaker at the Austin KXAN-TVNBC affiliate news station had patiently waited for my return to work after 11 weeks leave. The morning of my return to my job, I slowly drove toward Austin  listening to NPR and drinking my coffee wearing a bright blue suit, hose, and heeled pumps. Humming Helen Reddy’s “I’m Woman Hear Me Roar,” I powered my Honda Accord north toward Austin, and then after less than four miles, I powered it back toward home.

I reached my house in less than 7 minutes having thrown my pumps out the window on our dirt road (later my husband Andy would go and get these), and leaving behind a career that I knew I would not return to.

I returned home to take care of my daughter, even after leaving my husband with enough pumped breast milk to feed the Walton clan and a list of directions that spanned four pages. This is the same good husband that had my daughter, her first night on Earth, sleep just like a tiny doll on top of his chest after holding my hand the entire time of delivery.

I peered through our front den window, scared to go in and wondering what my husband was going to say to this harried, tear-streamed face, standing in  pumpless feet with ruined hose chanting, “I want my child back.”

It took all I could muster to step inside and tell my husband, now rocking our daughter,  that I turned the car around.

“I turned the car around,” I said softly at first. He was still looking at me, and I said again, “I turned the car around.”

Now he stood up with our sweet daughter and said, “Sweetie, of course you turned the car around, and handed me our daughter.”

Not only had I turned my car around but I had turned our life around. And it was all for the better. What this one choice gave me was countless moments of wonder with both my children now ten and fourteen. What it also gave me was a brand new career because I was lucky enough to get a job as a technology journalist in 1996 writing for a first mover online business information site called Internet Business Forum. Instead of interviewing celebrities as a freelance writer, I was interviewing people who built everything we use in our daily lives. I was at the start of the dot com, survived the dot bomb and am still going strong. (Thank God for my children and my husband who gave me the gift of doing this.)

Today I want to witness how powerful being a mother is, and although my story is about leaving a job and staying at home, motherhood is a 24 hour job no matter what decisions you make and every mother is incredibly important to the world. Each mother has a right to choose what is best for her children, her life and how she will mother. Every single mother counts, because they are the ones that shepherd each magnificent life to a well-lived life.

God Bless them all.