There was a time when I would cry over spilled milk.

I remember the time when I literally cried after pumping breast milk for dozens of minutes, only to spill the entire bottle on the plastic, laminate countertops of my then-Long Island home. Even though I was blessed with enough milk to donate to babies in the NICU – and I needed to purchase a large storage freezer for the sole purpose of storing my milk – those mere eight ounces of breast milk felt like gold to me.

Or there were the times when I would get my kids ready for bed at night, pouring milk into their sippy cups and accidentally knocking the cups over before I sealed them. Somehow, at the end of a long day with two young children, this would push me over the edge. I would cry over spilled milk.

And then there were times when the spilled milk of my life was dumped in other ways – like the times I lost sleep at night over something that happened at work or the time when I internalized, while still nursing baby, that I would soon be a single mom.

With Passover soon upon us, I just began my lengthy to-do list of my pre-Passover insanity. This year, because my head happened to be in my storage freezer searching for frozen bagels to consume (or rather, to feed to my kids), I found a bag of random stuff. When I opened the bag, I noticed two items inside: frozen cheesecake from last Shavuot (I know) and plastic bags of pumped breast milk. I looked at the dates on the breast milk bags. They were two years old. This means that I didn’t get rid of them last Passover.

It doesn’t surprise me that I didn’t throw them out last year. Back then, I was still hanging onto the baggage in my life – the stressors of work and single parenthood, the woes of relationships, the pain of one more loss. And although I believe that muddling through our pain is the best way to get beyond it, at least back then, dumping my expired breast milk down the drain just felt like one more loss and one more dream unfulfilled. They would stay in the freezer next to the frozen corned beef.

I thought I would always have at least three kids. Then life happened. Needless to say, it was difficult for me to stop nursing my second child. As beautiful as it was to see her become more self-sufficient, I enjoyed the bonding, the comfort and our time together. Selfish, I know, but I did not want it to end, especially knowing that she might be my last.

When I stopped nursing my baby, I began finding other ways of clinging on to my dream of another child. I kept every article of clothing, all the baby toys and even my pumping parts, should I be blessed with another pregnancy at some point.

But one day, in the middle of a yoga session, I realized that I already had everything I needed.

Before I was a mom, like Hannah in the Bible, I found myself praying for a child. After years of infertility, countless rounds of fertility injections and IVF, I would finally have a baby. And then, years later, another. I was blessed with not one, but two healthy children.

Just last night my daughter said to me, “Mommy, do you like being a rabbi?”

“Yes, honey. I love being a rabbi.”

“But do you love being a Mommy even more?” she asked, with a slight reservation in her tone.

“Yes, dear. I love you two more than anything else in the whole, wide world.”

And the truth is, isn’t that enough?

Two nights ago, I put my old breastmilk on the counter to thaw and just last night I poured it down the drain. I didn’t even shed a tear. As I looked at the golden milk swirling around my stainless-steel sink, I noticed residual pieces of soggy broccoli from last night’s dinner. The juxtaposition of the leftover food and my milk was powerful, as the green residue enveloped my milk with a mundane sanctity.

“It’s just spilled milk,” I told myself.

And then, I moved on.

This year, as I continue my Passover to-do list, I’m feeling a bit freer than last. I’m free of the “should-be’s” and “must-haves.” I’m learning to live with the spoils of the spilled milk of my life. In fact, in addition to getting rid of my hametz, my leavened food, I’m also ridding my home of bags of baby clothes and heaps of toddler toys. I will drop them off at a local women and children’s shelter, where my hametz will be someone else’s treasure.

Sometimes pouring your own milk down the drain is a deeply liberating feeling.