My daughter is about to turn 20 years old.

For two decades, I have marveled at my own good fortune, at this human we made, at how big a human heart can grow.

“In the end,” the late, beautiful poet Andrea Gibson wrote, “I want my heart to be covered in stretch marks.”

Yes. That.

I could go on (and on), but I’ll save it for her birthday card. Suffice it to say, I have spent 20 years trying to live up to the privilege of being her mom — 16 of those years with the added privilege of raising and loving her brother.

A few weeks before my daughter was born, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. I spent the early days of my maternity leave devouring the news coverage and sobbing inconsolably from what, in hindsight, I recognize as postpartum depression.

But something else was also at pla

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