I had always had a soft spot for my father, the typical daddy’s girl, and because of this it was a norm for me to dismiss my mother. In my younger years, I thought nothing of it. I would spend every weekend at my dad’s house, and sadly when I look back on the most memorable events of my childhood, they never really involved her. As I got older and started to spend most of my life at home with my mom, I realized that we clashed when it came to almost anything. I could blame it on my teenage years or even on our less than compatible zodiac signs, but it was obvious that as people we just didn’t match.

I once had a conversation with her about a scenario in which I went to high school with her and she told me straight faced and all that she would have probably fought me. My mom is a tough woman and has a rougher past than most so that wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for me to hear, but it was pretty clear that if this imagination were true we would have never appreciated each other. Mom and I probably would have never crossed paths, our differences, there were far too many. Even as I was getting to the end of my high school years we argued constantly, I would get mad at the little things she did and her the same.

I think it was my freshman year of college that I really started to see my mother as more than just a mother. During the start of my college days I was able to see my mother as a woman trying to find her place in the world, while also helping her children do the same. It was a time when the most human side of her showed, something I thought she kept tucked away behind her iron facade. I think it was after a breakup that she just felt so down about herself, she looked absolutely defeated and I just wanted to cry for her, that man didn’t deserve her. I didn’t understand how a relationship that lacked real love could shake her like this, she was so much stronger, so much better than this. A woman who works so much and doesn’t rely on anyone else for help tried to find happiness and when she thought she couldn’t she receded into herself. Everyday since then I have been wanting her to know that she is resilient and kind, and even when we argue, that I still love her, because I value that I can hear her voice and I love that she is by my side, helping me find my own bit of happiness, even when she believes that she doesn’t have some of her own. There are the moments when Mom absolutely beams. That’s when I feel like I’m her mother, and it's an amazing thing, really. Like my mother does for me, I want to show her how proud I am of her, and how bright she shines in my eyes.