But I never want to suggest that her worth was measured by those achievements, that she became valuable by marrying or by becoming a mother, that she had to earn her place in the world by doing the things the world doubted she could do.

That would be its own kind of cruelty, subtler than the schoolyard’s but related to it: the idea that a person like Gemma has to keep passing tests to justify her existence.

She did not.

Gemma was a complete and precious human being on the ordinary day of her birth, and she would have remained exactly as complete and precious if she had never married, never had a child, never done a single thing the world considered an achievement.

What her milestones proved was not that she was worthy.