As we get closer to Mother’s Day, I find myself reflecting less about my relationship with my children and more about my complex and often volatile relationship with my mother. My mother also had a complex and volatile relationship not just with her own mother, but also with her body, which is what brought me to be an Eating Disorder Therapist.

In November, it will be 24 years since I lost my mom. If you’ve been following me for a long time, you know that she spent her whole life trying to reach a “goal weight,” and constantly fighting with her body to be a shape it was never meant to be.

And then, ironically, by the time she was in her 40s, she wound up fighting with her body again.

This time though, it was to heal it, to keep it alive and to feel better. But like the fight for thin thighs, she didn’t win that one either.

The first couple of years after I lost her, I was so broken, so lonely and just lost. I felt isolated, alone and deeply in need of my mom. I was just starting my adult life and trying to figure out how to navigate the world without her. I really missed her and felt so… abandoned.

But then on a sunny May afternoon while I was in grad school, she came to visit me. It was one of those gorgeous spring days when you just don’t want to be indoors, but oddly enough, I was.

I was sitting in the living room of my San Francisco apartment when the most intense fatigue came over me.

I had been studying, but this exhaustion came on like a Mack truck and overtook me. Like a tsunami the heaviness hit and my eyes just wanted to close. I left my computer on the coffee table and stumbled into bed and just… passed out.

This was odd in its own right as everyone who knows me can attest that I am a certified non-napper. It’s not that I am anti-nap, napping is just something that I’ve never been good at.

But that afternoon, it was different. I closed my eyes but then fluttered them back open to find that I was on the Golden Gate Bridge riding in a car. My mother was in the driver’s seat and I was next to her in the cutest little 1960s MG or some kind of vintage foreign automobile.

“Mom,” I said, “when did you learn to drive a stick shift?”

“Oh,” she said, “I can do all sorts of things that I never could before now.”

I also noticed that she had gained weight. She was rounded out and adorable, wearing this cute little skirt and thigh-high boots.

“You look good,” I told her. “You look so healthy.”

“Yes,” she said. “I eat everything I want now- especially cake. I eat soooo much cake!” she giggled, “I never worry about what I eat now.”

But I began to worry.

“Mommy, I thought you died. I gave up your apartment. I donated all of your clothes and your things.

“”That’s okay,” she said. “I have a new home now.”

“Oh,” I said. And I sat quietly next to her, peaceful and content yet still marveling that she could finally drive a manual.

“Wait, so Mom, where are you living these days?”

“By the foothills of Hinton Park.”

“Hinton Park?” I asked.

And then I opened my eyes and was back in my bedroom in the Ashbury Street apartment.

I sat up in bed and said it out loud “Hinton Park?” my cat looked at me and yawned, like “I dunno.”

I walked out into the living room where my computer was still open on the table. I typed Hinton Park into Google. (Never before had I googled a dream reference).

The first hit that came up was a woodland burial ground by the beach in Christchurch, England.

My mother loved the beach. And I had deep regrets that we never really got to spend much time together by the ocean and that I had never gotten the chance to cultivate an adult relationship with her, or to heal the tumultuous one we had when I was growing up.

I was just so young when she passed away.

When I looked at the clock, I saw that less than 20 minutes had passed from the time I’d first walked away from the computer to take that inexplicable nap.

I truly believe that my mom visited me to let me know that she was okay and also that I was okay too. She wanted me to know that I was on the right road.

But it made me wonder- what if, instead of fighting her body, she had partnered with it? What if she hadn’t beaten it up, but loved on it?

Because when she visited me, that’s what she showed me, that it was okay to eat cake, wear short skirts and tall boots and to fly- not let myself be so tethered to the voices and beliefs and societal pressures that she’d battled her whole life.

So as this Mother’s Day looms, I wanted to tell you the story about that time my mother reminded me that I hadn’t been abandoned, and taught me that I should never abandon myself.

On the Thursday before Mother’s Day in 2004.

And now, when I think about my Mom, ever since she showed me the parts of her that were untethered and free, I get to remember that hot little car, the fly vintage skirt, and finally letting herself eat cake.

And this is what I’m choosing to hold onto.I hope you have a peaceful Mother’s day this year. Take care of yourself and those you love.