[Note: if you haven't already seen the controversial article that quotes me extensively over at Yahoo! Shine, about Rahna Reiko Rizzuto who says she abandoned her children, read this and then go look. More than 14,000 comments as of this writing.]

I have four children. On the summer solstice in 2008, I drove away from them in a car packed with everything I owned, leaving my three younger children behind to live with their father (my oldest already lived on her own). It was the hardest thing I have ever done. It was also the best thing I have ever done.

How can someone do this? How can a mother leave her children?

I was supermom. I did all the things you are supposed to do as a mother — except a hundred times more. I sacrificed so my kids could have a great life. One problem — I was married to an abusive man. After years of being unhappy, depressed, isolated and alone, I finally left the marriage to save myself. But the abuse got worse, this time through the court system. My ex even went to the state supreme court to keep our children from attending their school. I tried everything I could to make it better. Finally, I did what hardly anyone has the courage to do. I went against what society says to do, but I listened to my heart. I stepped back so my children's father could step up and be a better man. I moved 3000 miles away so my kids would have one home. I sacrificed being with the people I love most in the world — my children — so they could have a better life.

I rocked the supermom thing. Organic, attachment-parenting, stay-at-home Super Awesome Mommy Extreme. I left a ten-year career in upper-level property management to be at home with my babies after marrying an airline pilot. (My older daughter, from my first marriage, didn't have it so lucky; I loved my work but hated that I missed out on her early childhood, so I loved that I could stay at home with my younger three.) I threw myself into stay-at-home motherhood with gusto. A sample:

The energies of the eclipse and the Solstice have been intense for many people. I have seen and felt ghosts of my own past rise within me, and I feel grateful that I possess the tools I need to remain mostly balanced when confronted with these reminders of my former self. I have friends who are engaged in a deeper struggle, and it is for them I feel a familiar knowingness, understanding and deep compassion. It is for these friends, and for you too, if you also struggle this week in releasing what binds you from your past, that I share this beautiful poem by Derek Walcott.

Names are our most personal possession. It is through our name that we announce to the world who we are, bringing what's inside us outside and allowing people to find a connection into us. Many cultures around the world reserve the first name for family and close friends, believing it to be a private thing shared only in intimacy.

Names carry energy. Our names not only serve as a way to identify and differentiate us from others, but they have energy of their own. When you change your name, you avail yourself of a change in energy and identity.

When I was 12, I wanted to change my name. "Karen" did not define or describe me, I felt. True, I was still finding out who I was and as a result I had just begun writing nightly letters about my life and thoughts to my cat, Sheba, inspired greatly by the passion and earnestness of Anne Frank, but I knew deep inside that I somehow had the wrong name. I tried playing with the spelling — for a few months I wrote my name as Karyn — but that seemed like a meager compromise. My parents were no help: "You can change your name when you're 18." I was crushed. I knew that Karen wasn't ME.