I still mother them….

My mom was a fierce woman named Betty. She was raised by an even fiercer woman named Jessie.

Women shaped me. They shaped everything about who I am.

My mother always encouraged my bossiness. Long before people called women “leaders,” my mom would laugh and tell me someday that trait would matter. That one day it would become valuable. I think about that every single time I reach a milestone in my life. Somewhere in my head I still hear her saying, “See?”

As a little girl I probably just thought she was letting me be loud and opinionated. As a grown woman, I realize she was giving me permission to take up space in the world.

My mother was also sick almost my entire life.

She suffered from blood disorders and crippling rheumatoid arthritis from the time I was around seven years old. Hospitals were woven into the fabric of my childhood. They were not occasional places we visited. They were part of our normal.

I celebrated a prom visiting my mother in the hospital. Homecomings happened around hospital rooms. Report cards were brought into sterile hallways and waiting rooms.

I can remember countless times my brother Joe picking me up from school because my mom had taken a turn and we were heading back to the hospital again. More than once we were told it was time for last rites. More than once people thought we were losing her.

But my mother was a survivor.

That woman just kept coming back.

And when I look back now, I think growing up that way changes you. It teaches you resilience before you are old enough to even understand the word. It teaches you how fragile life is. It teaches you how to celebrate moments wherever you can find them because tomorrow is never promised.

Still, despite her pain, despite the endless hospital stays, despite medications and procedures and fear, she remained deeply creative and deeply loving.

And somehow these women could do everything.

My grandmother lost her husband young to a heart attack and she simply kept going. She did not sit down in the wreckage of it. She made life happen anyway. Looking back now, I realize she was an innovator before people even used words like that. She was a professional chef for the DuPont family. She planned massive parties and elegant events while raising children and surviving grief at the same time.

She knew how to create beauty while carrying hard things. I think a lot of women from that generation did.

My grandmother embroidered. She needlepointed. She hooked rugs. My mother made my wedding dress with her own hands. She made matching pajamas for me. She made Barbie clothes. Meanwhile, I cannot sew a button without creating what looks like a small household emergency.

But what they really passed down was something bigger.

I was reading something my friend Tee wrote recently where she said that in her mind she still talks to her mother, Miss Cookie, and says, “I’m doing the best I can.”

That stopped me in my tracks because I realized I say the same thing in my own heart.

Sometimes it is out loud. Sometimes it is in the middle of the night. Sometimes it is while I am trying to hold everything together for everybody else.

And somehow, even after 44 years without my grandmother and 35 years without my mother, they are still guiding voices inside me. Still shaping my choices. Still steadying me. Still loving me from somewhere beyond where I can reach.

There are still moments where I cook something and immediately think about what my mom would have added to it. Moments where I host people and realize I learned hospitality standing in kitchens with women who believed feeding people was one of the purest forms of love.

And honestly, I am grateful for that.

I am grateful I was raised by loving women. I am grateful I grew up in kitchens filled with stories and noise and feeding people. I am grateful my mother taught me that food is love.

Food became my love language.

Not fancy food. Not perfect food.

Just the kind that says: I thought about you. I wanted you here. I wanted you fed. I wanted you comforted.

And the beautiful thing about love languages is that the good ones keep traveling forward long after the people who taught them to you are gone.

I passed that love of cooking to my son, who loved being in the kitchen. And now to my grandson and granddaughter, who love cooking and experimenting and creating recipes of their own. They love gathering around food. They love feeding people.

I watch them creating memories they probably do not even realize they are creating yet. The recipe conversations. The laughter. The “taste this.” The little moments around a stove or kitchen counter that someday will become the things they miss most.

Maybe that is the real inheritance.

Not jewelry. Not money. Not things.

Maybe the real inheritance is teaching the next generation how to make people feel loved around a table.

Maybe it is teaching them resilience without ever having to say the word. Maybe it is teaching them how to survive grief and still create beauty. Maybe it is teaching them that even when life breaks your heart, you still invite people in and feed them anyway.

And maybe that gift never really stops giving.