Mom Called Me Damaged at My Sister’s Baby Shower

like your face here.”

“You do?”

“You look like a queen who just won a war.”

I laughed.

“I felt like a mother who was very tired.”

“Same thing,” Maya said.

She was not entirely wrong.

Many years later, after Eleanor died, grief came in complicated layers.

Anger. Relief. Sadness. Pity. Old longing. Strange guilt. The confusion of mourning someone who had hurt continue reading …