When she was born and I held her for the first time, small and furious and impossibly alive, I named her Grace.

I chose the name deliberately.

It was what I wanted her life to be full of, and it was what I felt, holding her, despite everything, a kind of grace that had come to me in the middle of the worst season of my life and refused to leave.

I want to be honest about how frightened I was, in those early days, because I think it matters.

I was a teenager with no money, no family, no degree, and a newborn who depended on me for every single thing.