You have gone through so much, and it hurts me, to see you hurting. But I am so thankful, for how it has allowed you to understand – to be there, for other people…

We were talking on the phone when she said that – she was crying – we’re an emotional duo. We’re practically the same person in many ways, my mother and I. Or at least, she has given me many things, and with them I am trying every day to become a little bit more like her.

After the wedding the other night, my friend looked at me and said, “You really are your mother’s daughter, and that is a big compliment”, and God, is it ever.

She gave me her auburn hair, her anxious heart, and her ability to be made up of more emotions than blood – and I see a little bit of her whenever I look in the mirror.

I am grateful.

Last night my friend asked me what the best thing was that my mother gave me. I said, the worst and best part about me, is that I feel things a little too deeply, all too frequently.

I got that from her.

And it hasn’t always been easy. We have held each other with shaking hands throughout the years. Sometimes, she is sorry for what she has passed down, but I am not.

Because my mother’s heart is made up of stretch marks, and some scars. It’s made from the days of depression and anxiety, the days of love – loving – me, and my brother, my father, and God.

It was shaped the moment she lost her mother, and the years she’s spent being thankful she could have a daughter.

And I spend every day trying to love the way she does. Trying to be there – for the people I love – the way she always is. While also trying to learn – desperately – how to be there for myself.

It is a lot – we agree. Because when you have been broken, eventually you see, that everyone else has been as well – and it doesn’t just go away.

Because if we were whole that would mean we’re finished. So it’s okay that the majority of us are still in pieces – mending ourselves day by day, finding new ways to fill the cracks and crevices – some good, some bad.

My mother gave me emotion and neither of us ever learned how to tuck it beneath our skin. We wore it on our backs, our fingertips, and in our eyes.

And sometimes, it is hard, to feel this many things.

But she is right – because if it wasn’t for the way my hands have learned how to carry all the things I have felt – there would be so many hands I would have never learned how to properly hold.