Setting a boundary, I learned from my son, is its own kind of healing.

And I built something of my own.

I kept my seat on the board of Vance Global, and I used it to start a foundation funding pediatric respiratory research — for Tommy, and for every parent I’d once sat beside under the fluorescent lights of a children’s clinic, trying to look strong for a child who was fighting to breathe.

At the first gala I ever hosted entirely on my own, my son sat in the front row, and afterward he came up and said, “You looked like yourself tonight, Mom.” I laughed and asked what I’d looked like before.

“Like a version of yourself,” he said, “that was working really hard not to inconvenience anyone.”