I couldn't chance failing in New York yet, letting the city fail me. It was the only place I knew I belonged. If I couldn't survive there, I would have no place else to go.

When a daughter loses a mother, the intervals between grief responses lengthen over time, but her longing never disappears. It always hovers at the edge of her awareness, prepared to surface at any time, in any place, in the least expected ways.

There is an emptiness inside of me -- a void that will never be filled. No one in your life will ever love you as your mother does. There is no love as pure, unconditional and strong as a mother's love. And I will never be loved that way again.

I am fooling only myself when I say that my mother exists now only in the photographs on my bulletin board or in the outline of my hand or in the armful of memories I still hold tight. She lives on beneath everything I do. Her presence influenced who I was and her absence influences who I am. Our lives are shaped as much by those who leave us as they are by those who stay. Loss is our legacy. Insight is our gift. Memory is our guide.

New York City is filled with random, quirky moments like this, chance collisions that just might change your life.

Our mothers are our most direct connection to our history and gender.

Writers seek to create order out of the chaos of everyday life, and to extract meaning from both the tragic and the mundane