Today’s prompt for Blogger, May I? has a few different coincidences — first of which being its proximity to Mother’s Day. And with today being the day of my birth, this is going to be a little love letter to my mama.

Yes, I’m a Mother’s Day baby. I was my mom’s first, so it added an additional heavy importance. Like any relationship, ours was complicated. As an adult now — the age she was when she had her SEVENTH child — I totally get it. It took a lot of growth, and sometimes some distance to understand one another.

But I’m incredibly lucky to have had a mother who was human. I know, that might seem like a weird way to describe a mother-daughter relationship, but it was tailored perfectly to my personality. She wasn’t a disciplinarian, and that helped me to cultivate my independence. I wasn’t afraid of making mistakes, which helped me be more driven and adventurous. I could talk to her about nearly anything. And the things I didn’t talk to her about, she already knew. I had to move back once during a traumatic experience in my early 20s; without judgment of my life or lifestyle, she took me back in until I could get back on my feet. At times, when just a kid, I felt like a second mother in the house — something I didn’t appreciate through my turbulent teen and young adult years — but wholly value in how it shaped me to have the capacity to love and care deeply and to be loyal to others (even when I don’t want to). And that sometimes that real unconditional love you NEED can be found in animals. And that sometimes dinner can be a spoonful of peanut butter, dipped in powder sugar, and then rolled in chocolate chips. Or something.

There were a lot of terrible things that happened to me in high school, which took me decades to reconcile. A few years ago, I watched my mother go through an amazing transition of finding herself and true happiness — which by happenstance, was a time when I was doing a lot of soul searching. I found the true importance in forgiveness that has helped me heal — and likely, has helped our relationship heal. I have never seen her happier and more content than at this time in our lives, and that’s something that fills my heart.

We’re different in many ways, which go beyond the count of our children. And the same: we’re both procrastinators and struggle with worry and would save every animal off the street if we could.

And we both hate spiders.

<3 you, mom.