Many of us will spend Mother’s Day remembering mom. How you remember her depends on your perspective and how you shape your memories. Do you feel your glass is half empty or half full? While there are facets of our lives for which we lack control, we do have the ability to choose how we view our past and it’s up to us whether we make peace with it.

My glass is half full and so are my memories. I find the older I get, the more I focus on the positive. I not only surround myself with positive people but I extend that energy to recollections of my past.

It’s been twelve years since my mother died and as each year has passed, so have the less than stellar experiences faded with time. All that remains of my life with mom are the good parts.

My mother had some extraordinary qualities and I choose to focus on those. Over time I’ve learned to better understand and appreciate my mom. She was twice widowed by the time she was forty-six. I was eleven years old when my father died and my siblings were twelve, fourteen, and twenty. My mother worked hard to support us and she devoted her life to her children, always putting us and our interests before her own. We were her jewels and she always said she was the luckiest lady alive.

Did my mother have faults? Did she say and do hurtful things? Absolutely. But she was also devoted, thoughtful, unselfish, generous, supportive, and loved me in a way that no one else has loved me. And she was my biggest fan.

I read comments all the time on anger and grudges that last way beyond death. Injustices that no longer can be righted and regrets that cannot be mended; negative energy that colors the past and takes up too much space in the present.

I don’t possess a magic tool to expunge the negativity but I do believe that it is essential to our well-being to focus on the positives in life and make peace with the past.

This Mother’s Day and every day I remember my mother with the joy and appreciation of all that is good within me. Thanks mom! 

Robbie Miller Kaplan is an author who writes from a unique perspective as a mother who has lost two children. She has written How to Say It When You Don't Know What to Say, a guide to help readers communicate effectively when those they care about experience loss, now available in three individual volumes: "Illness & Death," "Suicide" and "Miscarriage." Additional titles are available as e-books: "Death of a Child," "Death of a Stillborn or Newborn Baby," "Pet Loss," "Caregiver Responsibilities," "Divorce" and "Job Loss." All titles are in Amazon's Kindle Store. Click here to order.

Image via Flickr Creative Commons / 'Playingwithbrushes'