My mother, it turned out, had driven herself to a domestic violence center twice over the past year — and both times had turned the car around in the parking lot and driven home without going in.

“I didn’t want to ruin your marriage, sweetie,” she confessed to me from her hospital bed, when I asked her why.

That sentence will stay with me until I die.

Mothers will sometimes shatter themselves in total silence, believing all the while that their silence is the thing protecting their children — when it is the very thing putting them in danger.

My mother nearly died keeping a secret she thought was a gift to me.

I have had to forgive her for it, which is a strange and painful thing, to forgive someone for almost dying to protect you.