Navigating the world without my biological mother would not have been possible without the women who chose to raise me.

Nicole Johnson is a freelance writer whose work has been featured on The Washington Post, SELF, Redbook, Parents, Ms., Scary Mommy, Your Teen For Pare... nts, Yahoo, MSN and Curbed. She is the creator of the page Suburban Sh*t Show, a place where she discusses the real and raw truths of motherhood, midlife, childhood dysfunction and marriage. Nicole is also a fiction writer and mother of four.
Navigating the world without my biological mother would not have been possible without the women who chose to raise me.
A partnership of 20 years, even a broken one, isn’t one you leave on a Thursday night without discussion.
My birthday, along with so many other details of my life, had gotten caught up and swallowed by his addiction.
So different from the women she grew up with, my grandmother rocked a hot pink housecoat while pursuing her career.
They looked at my ocean, lived my dream. My mother’s other daughter was the me that I wished I could be.
When a plant arrives after her mother’s death, a girl finds in it the parent who never had the chance to care for her.