Growing up my mom has taken multiple roles in my life. She's been my protector, my home base, my worst enemy, my best friend, my biggest supporter and as I have grown up she's become a coach but she's also a human being. A person who cries, makes mistakes, who's not perfect.

When I was young my mom could make all my problems go away. I would cry to her and my brother would stop picking on me, she would chase away the monsters that lurked in the dark, and would make me feel better when kids at school were mean to me. There were no lengths she wouldn't go to so that I felt better. There were days spend in book stores and libraries, reading because that was a passion we both had or days where we would go to nail salon andI felt like such a big girl when she said I could get my nails painted too. Back when all my problems melted away in the bath tub my mom was my protector.

Now my problems are so much bigger than annoying brothers and mean kids. My problems are things my mom can't fix no matter how hard she tries but she still does. They don't just go away because I am wrapped in her arms. During my years in university she has become my home base. Someone I can run to when I just need to get a slice of home, just a semblance of peace. Even in the eye of the hurricane that is being a college student I can rest when I am with her. She becomes the life jacket that keeps me from drowning in a sea of stress.

During these years of early adulthood she is my coach. Helping to guide me through the different obstacles that life throws at me. I don't always listen, sometimes I have to fail to learn the lesson she was trying so hard to teach me. Like the years when I was learning to walk she has to let me fall so that I can teach myself how to dust off and get back up. Alongside being my coach, she's my biggest supporter, the cheerleader running up and down the fields telling me to keep going. Through watching her and listening to her I have learned a woman does not need a man, and that I can do anything a man can do. She has encouraged me to be the person I can be. Her favorite expression is "do as I say, not as I do" because she's always wanted me to be better than her.

Sadly, she's spent a lot of time as my worst enemy. Having to hear child say that she hated her must have been really hard, but she never gave up. She never held a grudge, always ready to put things aside even when I was just kissing up to her to get sometimes I wanted. She woke up every morning ready for a new battle. Ready for me to say the sky was purple when she said it was blue. I thought growing up with just one parent was hard but I can't imagine how hard it was to have to raise two children on your own was. I was so selfish I never realized how much you were suffering. How broken it caused you to be, I was just so focused on the fact that my dad was not there and that you chased him away. It took me years to realize that he didn't need to be chased, that he left on his own accord and you had to pay the price for it. When I grew up and understood that life is so much more than just black and white, there are two sides to every story and everyone will tell it differently. It doesn't matter why he left or who push away who, what mattered was who was there. You were the one there when I got sick, every ER visit, every day missed from school, and every broken heart you were there. You were there to tell me everything is going to be all right. Being 6 hours away from me when I was diagnosed with asthma was probably the hardest thing. Having to talk me through my asthma attacks and help me calm down almost broke you. I know how tempted you were to hop in your car and be here by morning. Every family member that died, every argument I had and called you crying tore your heart bit by bit because you knew these were wounds you couldn't heal. To love someone the way you love my brother and me is extraordinary any unbelievable. You love us when we are at our ugliest, you love us when we don't even love ourselves.

Sometimes your role as a human being is my hardest to grasp. I want to mold you and fix you into this person I think that you should be and that's my biggest fault. I have loved you since I first laid eyes on you and only now that I think I know what is right and wrong do I try to fix you. You have spent more years on this earth than I have, have seen things I can't even imagine that made you the person that you are today and I have no right trying to fix that. Everyday I learn more and more, form you, from my brother, my aunts, my grandma and from day to day life, and I realize I don't want to fix or correct you. I want to be your baby for as long as I can not the adult that tries to make you someone that you are not.

You have given me so many things on this earth but my favorite gift forever on is that annoying man I call my brother. You gave me my biggest criticizer, the biggest pain in my butt but also my best friend and my favorite protector. The bond that we posses will forever be because of you.