Dear Fab Fam,

Every time I come home to visit my mom, there is tiramisu in the fridge. Sometimes I eat it. Half the time I don't. It doesn't matter. It is there because my mother knows I love tiramisu.

Somewhere in the kitchen there is probably a bag of tamarind balls too. When my brother visits, he leaves with containers of oxtail. Whatever you love, my mother makes sure it's there waiting for you.

That is her love language. And she deserves this whole letter for that alone.

But Mother's Day has me thinking about something bigger too. About the women who raise us, shape us, steady us, and pour into us…even when they are not technically our mothers.

I grew up in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. My parents came to America to build and better the lives of their families. Before moving to America to live with my parents, I was raised on the island between two little houses connected by a narrow garden path.

One house belonged to my Auntie Germaine. The other belonged to my Auntie Mavis and Uncle Leon.

Auntie Germaine raised me with discipline, books, structure, and love. She lived to be 102 years old and remains the most influential person in my life.

Auntie Mavis put me on a piano bench for the first time. She encouraged ballet lessons when I said I wanted to dance. She introduced me to culture, art, expression, possibility.

And the rest of the village did what Caribbean villages do. Women cooked for children who weren't theirs. Somebody always had an eye on you. Somebody corrected you if needed. Somebody fed you. Somebody prayed for you. Somebody stepped in.

Love traveled communally.

The line of nurturing was never straight. It moved like that little garden path between the houses. From my mother, to my aunties, to the women down the road who handed you a plate because they knew you hadn't eaten yet.

I think that's why Mother's Day feels complicated for so many women. Because motherhood isn't always neat and traditional.

Some women raised children they didn't give birth to. Some women desperately wanted children and never had them. Some women had children and lost themselves inside the role. Some women mother everyone around them while nobody mothers them back.

And some of us sit somewhere in the middle of all of it.

Truthfully, I never considered myself particularly maternal. Not after that horrifying childbirth video they showed us in tenth-grade health class. You know the one. The video that was supposedly educational but felt more like a government-funded warning against sex altogether.

That video traumatized me.

So it surprised me years later, at 44 years old, when I found myself sitting on the train one morning suddenly thinking…maybe I wouldn't mind having a child after all.

The thought came out of nowhere, but this time it carried something unfamiliar. Urgency.

Then, right in the middle of my reflection, a woman boarded the train with three children.

"Mummy, how old am I?" "Mummy, what stop is this?" "Mommy. Mommy. MOMMY."

At 8 o'clock in the morning.

I watched that exhausted but patient mother and immediately thought: Absolutely not. I'm good.

A week later, I went to the OB-GYN and found out I needed a total hysterectomy. Life has a strange sense of timing sometimes.

I remember sitting with that news and realizing something quietly devastating: the choice was no longer mine to make. And even when you are unsure about motherhood…even when you've spent years convincing yourself you're fine either way…there is something emotional about a door closing permanently.

But over time, I've come to understand something important.

Mothering is bigger than biology.

Some women give birth to children. Some women give birth to safety. Some women give birth to creativity. Some women give birth to courage in other people. Some women create homes out of nothing but tenderness and food and attention.

My mother does that with tiramisu. My aunties did it with piano lessons and discipline and Sunday meals.

And maybe that counts too.

So today, I'm thinking about all the women who mothered us into becoming ourselves. The women who fed us. The women who protected us. The women who saw something in us before we saw it in ourselves.

And I'm thinking about the women reading this who spent decades pouring into everyone else and are only now learning how to pour back into themselves.

Maybe this chapter is not about becoming somebody new. Maybe it's about finally giving yourself some of the care you so freely gave everyone else.

Happy Mother's Day to the mothers. The aunties. The grandmothers. The godmothers. The stepmothers. The women who tried. The women who grieved. The women who nurtured anyway.

And especially the women who are learning that they deserve tending too.

With love, Izzie