Motherhood carries a woman through the rest of her life; it knows no end, no timeline, no expiration. But daughterhood is more mysterious, more fragile, and more tangled. In part it is something we choose, but also something that is gifted to us. The mother-daughter relationship can often take many forms and finding a healthy balance is difficult.

As I sat in a bed about to deliver my baby, hoping for the anesthesiologist to come quickly, or even more than that, to have a mother there to tell me that everything will be ok.