03/09/2026
Last September, sitting on a patch of grass in the middle of a labyrinth on a beautiful fall day in North Carolina, I asked my Mom when she felt most beautiful.
A few months before that, I had decided I wanted to start opening the dialogue to more conversations with the women in my life about heartbreak, love, loss, grief, beauty, motherhood, womanhood, girlhood, and everything in between.
I watched my Mom trace the labyrinth a handful of times before joining her in meditation and recording this conversation. We spent the week leading up to her surgery doing yoga, eating lentils, watching documentaries and sunsets, and reading to each other before bed. Her surgery had been years in the making, but it took no less bravery to see it through.
The following conversation took place on our last day before her surgery, the sunniest day we had together. Since I was little, my Mom has always told me we share the most particular features: the same vein placement, fingernails, nose. My Mom is beautiful, but to me we’ve always looked like opposites—her olive skin to my fair skin, her dark hair to my light, her sharp features to my softer ones. Still, I’ve always loved the idea of her holding me in the hospital and searching for our similarities.
Now, at almost 30, I hear more than ever from strangers and family that we look the same; that my face and smile are growing into more of a reflection of hers. It brings me so much joy to hear what parts of each other people see in us, but for me it has never been our physical similarities that I’ve loved most. It’s almost always been our laughs, which I think is captured so accurately in this conversation.
I want to thank my Mom for her vulnerability and her willingness to let me do for her, for a short period, what she has done for me my whole life. For letting my Dad and I rub her feet, make her food, carry her around, and time her medicine. But even beyond that, for answering my question so earnestly, and for doing what most mothers do: giving so much of herself to me without asking for anything in return.
Je t’aime, Mom 🦋
