At my sister’s wedding reception, my mother stood up and told all 200 guests, “At least she wasn’t a complete failure like my other daughter. Even her birth ruined my life and destroyed my dreams.”

It just teaches you how to function while carrying it.

My mother, Helen, spent my entire life treating my birth like a theft.

She had been twenty when she got pregnant with me and was supposed to start law school that fall.

According to her version of history, I was not a child.

I was the event that derailed her destiny.