This week, as I was editing this set of family photos, I came across one that made me stop for a few seconds and think more deeply (which is not as common of an occurrence as one might think!). This is a photo of a mother and a daughter, and I don’t have much to say about it except this: The mother/daughter relationship is one of the most complicated and beautiful relationships in the whole world. It can be a source of both unexplainable joy and immense pain.
A few years ago, my mother sent me this poem on Valentine’s Day. It brought me to tears both then and now, and I want to share it here. I think that as complex and difficult as things get with our mothers at at times, most of them feel this way about their daughters (even if they’re teenagers) 
By the wonderful e.e. cummings:
