And this Mother’s Day, she rang my front doorbell smiling like she’d only been gone for an afternoon instead of an entire decade.
What happened after that changed something inside me forever.
That morning started like most mornings in our house—loud, crowded, and held together by routines we built out of survival.
I stood in the women’s aisle at the grocery store holding a pack of pads while trying to remember which brand Maya said worked best for her sisters. Ahead of me, a nervous teenage girl stood beside her mother while the woman whispered something gentle enough to make her daughter smile through embarrassment.
I remember watching them and thinking:
Natalie should’ve been the one teaching our daughters this part of life.
Not me.
My third daughter, June, had started her period that morning.
