Dear Mom,

I write this as I sit about two feet away from you, driving home from my first year at college. You're doing the majority of the six-hour drive because I am sleepy.

Throughout growing up, I have repeatedly realized how lucky I have been to have you as my mother. Mostly, because you are so much more than that: you are my best friend, my tutor, my personal cheerleading squad, my financial advisor, my therapist, my personal chef and culinary instructor, my physician, my uber, and honestly, kind of a sugar daddy.

However, these realizations I’ve had have not been about what you are, but who you are. Not the things you do, but how you conduct yourself.

When I was in fourth grade, you and Dad took me to a park and told us you guys wouldn’t be together anymore, and my kid-brain didn’t have the attention span to think about it more than to respond, “Cool, let's go play tag now.” My kid-brain didn’t realize everything that was going on, everything you were going through, but not because it was a kid-brain. It was because you had such strength and poise that you never let me or Clarke (who was even more of a kid) see the hell you were living in.

When I was a sophomore in high school and my first boyfriend had dumped me and my angsty little-teenaged self couldn’t figure out how to carry on living, I yelled at you and told you, “You have no idea what this feels like!” You didn’t yell back, you didn’t laugh at me or scold me for comparing your divorce to my middle school relationship. You sat down next to me and you rubbed my back.

When I was in 8th grade and a girl in my class told me I should join the itty-bitty-titty-committee, and I was convinced the only solution was to get a boob job, you sat me down and told me how you would never give up what society calls “small” boobs. You reminded me: hey, you can go braless, play sports, wear bralettes, and that's awesome. But most importantly, you told me that your beautiful breasts fed your beautiful children, and that was worth the world.

When I was a senior in high school, I was so overwhelmed with assignments and extracurriculars and endless applications, unsure of where I wanted to go or what I wanted to do or really who I even was. All I wanted to do was take a nap. You called me out of my 7:30 am class so I could sleep for an extra hour. That extra hour made me an exponentially happier person.

When we were on my choir tour in Spain last summer and I got in trouble for being in my friend’s hotel room after hours, a chaperone called you to tell you what a delinquent your daughter was, directly in front of me. I sat there angry and embarrassed and in tears until suddenly, she went totally silent. I had to contain my laughter because I immediately knew that you were ripping this woman to shreds over the phone.

When I walked in through the door the night of the 2016 presidential election, angry and teary and genuinely scared for what the future held for us, you held my hand and you looked me in the eyes and you reminded me that it was no matter. We would just need to fight a little harder for what we deserved. I remember standing next to you in the streets of Berkeley, only days after, feeling so proud and so strong. It was so obvious on that day, what you had told me that night had been told all around the country.

Mom, thank you for all of the late nights you would stay up and talk to me, even though I knew you could barely keep your eyes open. Thank you for always telling me about tomorrow when I was little and needed to feel organized and prepared for the next day before I went to bed. Thank you for dirty dancing with me in the kitchen to Flo Vida’s Low, for pouring me wine after long days, for singing the GGilmore Girls theme song with me in god awful voices, that even made our almost deaf old lady dog cringe. Thank you for face timing me so I could say goodbye to her before she died.

Mom, thank you for being my biggest role model. Thank you for being a good person: for putting your all into school auctions, election campaigns, Lazarex Cancer Foundation, and of course, all of my activities, while still putting your all into being my mom.

Mom, you have made me the person who I am more than anything else in my life. Thank you for teaching me to be confident and caring, tenacious and tender, unapologetic and understanding.

More love than you could imagine,

Becca