Edie Falco strides toward Peace & Love. As she arrives, it dawns on me that the name of her favorite Manhattan café could just as appropriately be the two aspects of her life that Falco has consciously stridden toward as well. Sober now for 17 years and a survivor of breast cancer, the 45-year-old actress has also adopted two children - son Anderson, 4, and daughter Macy, 1. They are at the center of her very busy life now that she has returned to television, starring in the title role of the new Showtime series Nurse Jackie, premiering June 8.

*While her kids are napping at home in the care of their nanny, Falco orders chamomile tea.

"I'm just not one of those people who thought having biological children was that important," she says. "To me it was more about wanting to raise a child. I have this dog named Marley, and it is a kind of love I had never known. I have a hard time believing Marley did not come from my body. I know that sounds insane, but I feel that connected to her. She made me realize I wanted to adopt children. If I could only find a boyfriend for whom I could buy a can of food and clean up after on the street, I'd be set," Falco adds, laughing. "Maybe I should put that ad on /Match.com/."*

*The former /Sopranos/ star has never been married, and her love life is the one thing she chooses not to discuss. Everything else, however, is on the Peace & Love table. Falco insists that her sobriety - she is a firm believer in AA's 12-step philosophy - helped her survive cancer.

"I had really been taking care of myself for about 15 years before I got sick - not drinking, not smoking, eating well - so I fared very well," she says. "They gave me very strong chemo drugs. I was so lucky that two of the biggest things in my life - my sobriety and my breast cancer - happened in the order they happened. And I've been in therapy since time began," she jokes. "Maybe that helped a little, too, on some level."

Falco pauses and runs her fingers through her spiky blond hair, which has not seen a brush yet today.

"I had my biopsy at 8 in the morning," she recalls. "Within two hours, I knew I had cancer. Then, at 1 o'clock, I had to be on the set of /The Sopranos/. It was the scene in which Tony and Carmela were already divorced, and I'm telling him I'm going to take him for everything. It was a very angry scene for me, and that helped a bit, I'm sure. I had a miserably hard time holding on to my lines. It was a terribly frightening and surreal time, but I never missed a day of work, even on the worst chemo days. You have no idea at the time that there is a future. It's a future that involves taking a trip to Sloan-Kettering hospital every six months to make sure I'm okay, but it's just a part of who I am now. You learn to live with it and are amazed how you find ways to be grateful for it."

I offer Falco a saying I'm sure she's heard in the 12-step meetings she still attends: There's our plan, and then there's God's plan.

"That's exactly it," she says. "You have to learn to get out of your way. It's like the situation now with my kids. I have lots of friends and, like me, they're not married. So my kids have lots of godparents - men and women, gay and straight. My loft is always filled with people helping me out with them and loving them. I never could have planned it as beautifully as it has turned out - this strange, unconventional family I have going on. I don't feel like a single mother at all."

What would be the most surprising thing for Falco's fans to know about this woman who is so adept at portraying tough-as-nails broads - whether it's Carmela Soprano or, now, Nurse Jackie? Falco blushes.

"I'm an old-school, embarrassing Joni Mitchell fan," she says. "Her music made a hook in my soul and hasn't let go for all these years. I even sing her songs as lullabies to my kids. All I want for them as they're falling asleep is to be complete in the knowledge of the love I have for them. And one of the surest things I know is my own love for Joni Mitchell. It seems to somehow connect me to the love I now have for my two children."

Now that nap time is over, Edie makes her goodbyes. I watch through the window as she strides back home to where her own versions of peace and love await her.