Finding Love in the Void of Motherless Mothering

I think I was about ten when I asked my mom a question that resembled a question that I would ask myself 26 years later when I was pregnant with my first child: “When you have a baby and you bring it home, how do you know what to do with it?” My mother’s answer was plain and simple: “Your mother teaches you.”

Tragically, she never got this opportunity; my mother died when I was 24: six years before I would meet my husband, and thirteen years before I would have my first child. I am a motherless mother, and like any other woman in this category…