As I grew older, I began wondering about the version of my mother that existed before I did. Not just the parent who raised me, but the younger person she once was: the life she'd imagined for herself, the experiences that shaped her, the parts of her history that I will never fully know. Many of us know our mothers in practical roles first: caretakers, disciplinarians, emergency contacts, occasional embarrassments. But the earlier versions of them often survive only in fragments. They might share an old photograph or make a fleeting comment about a life that existed before ours. Mothers can watch us become ourselves, but we rarely get to witness who they were before we arrived. Over time, we begin to see our moms less as fixed parental figures and more as full people: loving and flawed, familiar and unknowable. Today's newsletter gathers stories that try to make sense of that realization. My colleague Isabel Fattal recently asked readers to share a photo of something that sparks...
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