Mom,

I want to start this letter by firstly saying thank you.

Thank you for taking me in and loving me as your own.
Thank you for treating me with the same care, love, and intolerance for bullshit you show your own daughters.
Thank you for letting us stay up late and sleep in.
Thank you for letting us wake up to the smell of breakfast.
Thank you for helping me fight my battles. (and honestly, for fighting them for me.)
Thank you for opening your heart up to me and calling me your daughter.

But most importantly, thank you for giving me the greatest gift in the world and creating the most incredible human being I know. My best friend. Your daughter.

Although you are not my mother biologically, you are most definitely in every other way.

You are the woman who built me up, who kept me strong, who took my mother's place when she could not be there.
Who has always loved me as if I was one of your own and made me really believe I was.

You have seen me at my best and helped me through my worst.
You have always treated me as family by teaching me to believe that it doesn't end with blood and love comes in all shapes and forms.

I know that I will always be able to count on you. No one will ever be able to replace the spot that you have taken in my heart.

Thank you for being the answer to the prayer I did not realize I had asked for.

I never knew the day I met my best friend, I would gain something so much more than a friendship. I also gained a family.

I love you.

Love,
Your daughter.