To: Tree, From: Apple

It took me about two decades to realize my mom was a person. Of course, she was living and breathing and existing before my eyes, but only ever as “mom”. It was difficult for me to wrap my head around the idea that I had been in my mom’s life for only a small fraction of the time she'd been living. In this mindset, it is so easy to be selfish. There is always room to demand more. Growing up, I found myself constantly frustrated with a number of things that felt out of my control. Frustrated that at times our pantry would be barren for weeks. Frustrated with the grime and clutter that became the backdrop of our home. Frustrated with the regular displays of domestic unrest between my parents: screaming, wall punching, gaslighting. It could all be too much. I needed somewhere to displace this frustration and somehow my mother became the scapegoat. It was her job to make sure we always had lots of lovely things to eat. It was her job to make sure messes didn't get out of control. If she was so clearly unhappy in her marriage, it was her job to leave. If only she could just do her job.

I had simplified my mother when she is anything but. She’s a complex person who's been through a lot. She’s the product of a working-class black family that moved often for employment. The oldest of 3, she essentially raised her much younger siblings. Her mother was abusive and her father was mentally checked out. She has dealt with abuse in multiple senses of the word.

My mother became a nurse twenty-six years ago, a field demanding in both emotional and physical labor. She has faced the dynamic of being either the only or one of the few Black nurses on a team serving a predominantly white area. Each day she brought home stories of micro and macro aggressions from coworkers and patients alike. Oftentimes in these stories, the only person being reprimanded was my mother when deciding to stand up for herself.

My mother is a petite black woman moving through a world that tells her she is audacious when asking for the bare minimum. She has spent so much time in spaces and around people that intentionally try to shrink her, yet she manages. Every day she manages. She is so much more than "mom". She is a full-blown individual with hopes and dreams and worries and duties and pain that exists outside of me.

The pedestal that I placed my mother on growing up is no different than the pedestal patriarchy utilizes every day to decide if women are worthy, and to devalue them when they don’t measure up. A “good mom” is another one of the many “good” demarcations that we spend girlhood and womanhood trying to cross, ignoring the grief that is obtained in the process. Before “good mom” there’s “good daughter”, “good girlfriend”, or “good wife”. The list of "goods" goes on. At twenty-three, I feel this pressure myself more than I ever have. Recently graduating from college and trading the identity of “good student” for "young adult very much struggling to adult" is a large factor in how I found myself in an emotionally abusive relationship. Feeling like a disappointment in multiple aspects of my life, I was grasping at any opportunity to be “good” to someone. Who could women be if allowed to break free of this insatiable demand? Who could my mother have been in my eyes all this time?

Today, I release my mother from this stipulation. I love her for more than her capability to measure up to the perfection that is a good mother. I love her for her humor, her quirks, and her creativity. I am in awe of and inspired by her resilience. I am forever grateful for the ways in which she let me express myself and the ways she actively instilled adventure and exploration into my days as a child. I am remorseful of every adolescent outburst she undeservingly was on the receiving end of. I hope to maintain my childlike spirit and self-expression as she has all these years, despite my cringing as a teenager when my mother was simply being her unapologetic self. I am granting my mother the grace that I am learning to grant myself. It can be very hard, this being a woman thing. We like to pretend that one day you just wake up and have it figured out. In reality, it’s a never-ending learning process from the women around you. I am lucky I get to be around my mom.