From the New York Times, I'm Anna Martin.
This is Modern Love.
And today I'm talking to writer and journalist Tracy Clark Flory.
Growing up, all Tracy wanted was a sister.
She'd beg her parents for a sister all the time.
And she could tell it made her mom upset, but she didn't understand why.
Then when she was 16 years old, Tracy's mom sat her down and told her the truth.
Tracy did have a sister.
When Tracy's mom was a teenager herself, she got pregnant and she was sent away to have the baby in secret.
She never saw the baby again.
After this conversation, Tracy had a million questions and she spent years wondering what happened to this sister.
She never knew.
Today on the show, Tracy's here to tell me how she finally got some answers, not just about her sister, about her mom too.
Tracy Clark Flory, welcome to Modern Love.
Thanks so much for having me.
Tracy.
In your new book My Mother's Daughter, you write that when you were 16, your mom Deborah, decided to tell you a big secret from her past.
Can you take me into that moment?
What happened?
Yes.
So this was just a couple weeks after I had gone on birth control pills.
I feel like it's relevant to mention.
I had a boyfriend at that time and she sat me down at the kitchen table and she said I have something to tell you.
It's serious.
Hmm.
When I was 18, I had sex and I got pregnant.
My father sent me away to a home for unwed mothers and I had the baby, a girl, and I placed her for adoption.
And it felt like a trap door had opened up underneath me.
I had been raised as an only child.
You know, we had our little family trio, me, my mom and my dad.
And I'd actually grown up begging, like begging for a sister.
Over and over again.
I wanted a sister so bad.
And not a brother, specifically a sister, not just a sibling.
I never begged for a sibling.
I begged for a sister.
And I'd even growing up, had concocted stories in my head about a secret sister that my parents were keeping from me.
I mean, keep going.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I remember laying in bed at night and I had this story that there was a secret sister who lived down the hall in our house and thinking like oh, that doesn't make any sense.
Like, You know, why wouldn't I see her?
You know, where is she during the day?
But I remember holding my breath at night and trying to hear her breathing.
And so, you know, in retrospect, of course, I'm like, well, I clearly had some sense.
Some kind of embodied knowledge.
Or let me poke at that.
Had you had any indication from your mom that something like this was in her past?
Did it totally shock you?
It did totally shock me.
And yet I would say that I had had this insistent sense of a mystery, of a secret.
And so like one early memory that I have is being eight years old in the car with my parents.
My dad was driving, my mom was in front of me in the passenger seat.
And I was begging for a sister.
It was one of those many times where I was begging for a sister.
And I said, why can't I have a sister?
I just want a sister.
And my mom fell silent.
And I couldn't see her face because she was directly in front of me.
But I saw my dad look at her.
And he quickly, like you know, jumped to fill the silence and was like well, you know, when your mother was pregnant with you, she had preeclampsia and it was a very risky pregnancy.
It was life threatening.
We didn't want to try again.
And I knew that story.
They told me it before.
I knew that story.
Yeah.
And it made sense.
It made sense that they wouldn't want to try again.
But I could tell there was something more.
So back in this moment, you know, years later at age 16, your mom has told you the secret.
I must assume that when she tells you this, a million questions are running through your mind.
Well, so I didn't.
I mean, I was just in so much shock in that moment.
You know, it was one of those moments where you almost feel like you're going to pass out.
And I remember my mom sort of adding information to what she'd already said.
She said that she'd added herself to an adoption registry in case her daughter ever wanted to come find her.
She explained that adoptions were closed back then, which meant that she didn't know where her baby had ended up.
Yeah.
And that she added herself to this adoption registry so that she could find her if she ever wanted to.
So the baby could find your mom.
The baby could find her.
Yes.
And that someone might call the house looking for her one day.
But no one had so far.
No one had.
And also I should mention, like, she told me that all of this had happened in the 60s.
I was born in 1984.
Okay.
So I was learning that I had a sister out there somewhere and that she was 20 years older than me, you know.
And my mom then told me that the father of her baby was black, that he was Nigerian, that she met him at college.
Okay.
My mom is white.
I am white.
And I remember her saying something along the lines of that race made her unwed pregnancy that much more taboo.
Yeah.
I mean, let me just zoom out for a second and say, this is a lot.
This is so much to learn when you think you're going to have like a A sex talk, right?
I mean, if she's sitting you down about birth control, you're like, all right, a condom, I get it.
You know what I mean?
Like this kind of thing.
But yeah, I mean, it's there's so much more here.
And I want to kind of connect the dots.
It's like she was telling you about this unplanned pregnancy.
So it seemed to you like the, the birth control sort of trigger, and set off this waterfall because you were coming into your sexuality.
Is that right?
Yeah.
I love the way you frame that, because it's like this was my sex talk, even though we talked about sex many times before.
I grew up in Berkeley, California. with a couple of hippie parents.
It was like a very sex-positive household.
But when I think about certainly the most impactful sex talk that we ever had, the most memorable one, it would be this
And it was very clearly in response to me going on birth control.
And in response to her fear's About me and my future and the potential of history repeating itself, I think
You know, I think she – in many ways, I think she didn't want to tell me.
I think she was avoiding telling me, and I think that this was a moment where she felt like she – had to for my own good.
And mostly I could tell, you know, my mom was terrified in that moment.
She had this look of like, please don't hate me.
Like, please don't judge me.
And I could see in that moment that she was in a lot of pain.
And I think she was scared of what I would think of her as my mom, as a mom, learning this.
And what did you think of her?
Consciously, in that moment, I don't know.
I don't know what...
I don't know if I made any sort of judgment.
I think in that moment at the kitchen table it's like growing up.
I was kind of making out this kind of shadow in our family.
And then, in that moment of that conversation, the revelation that she had placed a baby for adoption.
It was like I was suddenly seeing what had cast that shadow.
It was like I saw the mystery.
I saw the presence of something that was there that didn't quite add up.
There was like a part of my mom that was not – available to me growing up.
Like you know, she would also like there are other things like i would.
I would watch the way that she disappeared into her room and um, lock the door and she would smoke weed multiple times a day and it was like so maybe it's berkeley, you know, and it's like there was this sense of like my mom is a person Who exists beyond what I know of her.
In this way, that's really mysterious to me as a kid, because she could be such a very present mom, but then she would be kind of disappeared.
Like there was part of her that was suddenly secreted away in her room.
And so I just knew that there was – more to her than she had shared.
That they have secrets, that they're dealing with shit, that they sometimes need to go into a room and lock the door.
I mean, you're saying these things that bring up so many questions, right?
Home for unwed mothers.
What is that?
Where is that?
Who goes there?
What did that mean?
I mean, so many questions there.
You know, her parents, I'm thinking, I'm just thinking about all of these questions.
Your mom's parents, I mean, must have been running through your mind.
She's 18.
So she's, it's just like, there's so much.
And you're also describing how you're looking at your mom and she's terrified of judgment.
Did this seem like a place or a time where you could ask these questions?
I mean, I was full of questions, right?
Like, yeah, indeed.
What is a home for unwed mothers?
Like, what does that even mean?
I really understood in that moment that she was sent away in shame, that there was some aspect of being hidden away that was happening.
But I didn't understand what the homes really were.
And I had so many questions.
But in that moment, I remember my mom saying, do you have any questions for me?
And the only question I asked and it's kind of interesting looking back was do you ever wonder about her?
Oh, yeah.
That is a really compassionate question, I think.
Yeah.
I mean, of all the questions, that was the one that I guess I felt I had to ask.
And she just said in this like gush of a whisper, I think about her every day of my life.
Oh, I'm so moved by that.
Wow.
It was.
I mean, that was just this other additional layer of revelation, because it was like my sister has always been in the room with us, in a way.
I remember picturing in that moment like, oh, wow, like every day.
That my mom's gotten up and gotten ready for work.
She's thought about this lost daughter.
Did you get the sense that your mom, I mean, you say shame.
Did you get the sense that she had regrets?
Was that something that was coming across to you?
I didn't get the sense of regret.
What the sense I got in that moment was that she sort of took this sense of personal responsibility.
Like that it was like this happened.
I did this.
And that there was nothing she could do about it.
And one thing I really clearly remember from that conversation is she said that sometimes people hire private detectives to try to find their babies from this era of adoption right.
And she said And I think I got the sense in that moment that her greatest hope for her daughter was that she had had a wonderful family life and that she would be an intrusion.
Upon that.
Your mom would be an intrusion.
That my mom would be an intrusion upon her life, yeah.
I mean, as you got older, did you revisit this conversation, you and your mom?
Did you learn more about her story over the years?
Very little.
The most significant occasion was...
Sometime after, I believe I was in my early 20s and I was sitting in the living room with my parents and we were watching a show on HGTV.
Hmm.
Which my mom was like a big gardener and, you know, I loved reality TV.
Perfect match.
Perfect union of our interests.
Totally, totally.
And we made it work.
And it was like a garden makeover show.
And they'd made over this garden in this like very sterile and regimented way.
And I went, oh, it looks like a mental institution.
And then I said, and I can't explain this.
I don't know how to explain this.
This is such a bizarre question to ask.
But again, it's kind of like, what did I know without knowing?
I said, have either of you been to a mental institution?
Hmm.
I mean, it's a question that you could ask a family.
Sure.
Okay.
Yeah.
I'm just going to give that one to you.
It honestly doesn't seem that.
You're like, okay.
Well, you're just kind of making conversation.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
And then there was a pause.
And then my mom said, well, honey.
And she muted the TV.
And she tells me that in the wake of the adoption, she was so distraught.
In her devastation, her therapist thought that she was a threat to herself.
He, you know and I remember her saying I wasn't suicidal, but he thought that I was and that he committed her to a mental institution.
Oh, my gosh.
Like a locked ward.
And yeah, so what I understood then was that.
You know, she went to a very dark place in the wake of the adoption.
Did she share any more about what that was like?
Or was it like we turned back on the TV and we kept going?
Yeah, I think we literally turned the TV back on.
I mean, I think that we had a moment.
I think we sat with it.
I know there were a couple moments where I did ask her some additional follow up questions.
Um, and i just even just using the word follow-up question, i have to point out that i became a journalist, but so it's like funny as a journalist who always has a follow-up question immediately in the moment, to not, in these key moments, have had a follow-up right, and i know that i felt a lot of nervousness kind of going there with her because I was worried for her.
But I also think it was painful for me to kind of know more of her pain.
We'll be right back.
We're going to take a turn here because...
In your 20s.
You were still in your 20s when you lost your mom to cancer.
Is that right?
Yes.
Yeah.
I'm really sorry.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Do you think this is a really tough question, but I wonder if.
Do you feel like your mom had reached a sense of peace about this daughter before she passed?
Or did you have a sense of where she was, I guess, with this part of her story?
Yeah.
I remember, towards the end of her life, her saying something to me that really did express a sense of Resolution or acceptance, where she said you know, because I was just so upset about what she would miss.
And I remember her saying to me, I'm just so glad that I got to have.
Sorry.
I'm just so glad that I got to have my two loves.
And that was referring to me and my dad.
And I think it makes me cry now because I think about her third love that she didn't get to have.
And I wonder now, you know, even just in this moment of saying that like, is there part of her gratitude for her two loves that is about, in part, about the love she didn't get to have?
And so she's, you know, had this gratitude of like, I had this alongside the loss.
Oh, my gosh.
When you said two loves, I was like there is a.
You talked about the sort of shadow that was always with you, with the family, with her.
And certainly, I mean, again, can't know for sure, but seemed to you to be present in that moment.
About 10 years after your mom died.
You decide to take a DNA test to try to find her first baby, your sister.
Why do you think you hadn't tried to find your sister before then?
Yeah, I mean, I remember thinking about this, especially in the wake of my mom's death, because I think before she died it felt like it was hers to pursue.
And after she died, I considered the possibility of hiring a private detective.
I thought about that.
And then I remembered what my mom had told me decades earlier, which was that she hadn't done that because she felt like it wasn't her right to Mm-hmm.
Sure.
Mm-hmm.
I'm also a person who's friends with a lot of journalists who cover the tech industry.
And I, you know, kind of heeded the warnings around privacy concerns around DNA tests.
I found it kind of disturbing, the idea of a multi-billion dollar company having my DNA.
And why is that disturbing?
Just kidding.
I know.
What about that's creepy?
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
Should be fine.
Yeah.
Seems fine.
And so I kind of put it off and I was like, ah, it doesn't feel right.
And then it occurred to me.
Like.
This is the way that you would find your sister, and it's a way to find her only if she wants to be found.
You wouldn't be busting into her life in an unwanted way.
Unannounced.
You know, why not?
And so I literally pulled out my phone, ordered a test, boom, done.
And, you know, screw it.
Have my DNA.
Right.
I am concerned, but I want to find my sister more.
This is a bad idea, but I care more about finding my sister.
Totally, totally.
Means to an end.
Yes, yes.
I spit into a vial.
I dropped it in a mailbox.
Two weeks later, I was in the car with Christopher and Quinn, my husband and my son.
Quinn was snoozing in the back seat in his car seat.
He was four years old at the time.
And I got a message from Ancestry, and it said, your DNA results are in.
And I tapped, I mean, I've never tapped so hard on an email before in my life.
And of course, like, I'm like, what are the odds?
What are the odds?
Like why, you know, she could have, one, you know, would she even take a test?
Two, would she take it with the same company?
Immediately, my number one top match is a woman named Kathy.
And she is a total stranger, but I recognize her instantly. her face, her little profile photo.
I see she has the same arch in her eyebrows as I have.
She had these high cheekbones that remind me of my maternal grandmother and this essence of my mom.
Immediately, I feel like I'm looking at my mom for the first time since she died.
Um, and I clicked through to her bio and she lists some details that are like very clearly, this is my sister.
Oh my God.
Oh my God.
How are you feeling?
Can you believe it?
No.
Oh my God.
No.
Me neither.
I mean, it's, it's.
It is miraculous.
Here she is, this little profile photo.
Kathy.
Kathy.
To have a name.
She has a name.
A name.
A name.
This whole time, it's just the baby.
My mom's daughter.
My sister's.
And now she has a name.
I just remember, you know, Christopher's just innocently driving the car home.
And I'm like having this internal combustion moment.
And I'm like, I think I found my sister.
And did her profile say, like, I'm looking for my family?
Or what did her profile say?
Yeah, her profile said She knew she had been placed for adoption in the 60s and she said family is my world and there is always room for more, which felt like an invitation.
It felt like she is open to being contacted, certainly.
So what did you do?
She sent in her DNA.
She has this profile that seems like she's open, but was part of you also nervous to get in touch?
I didn't think about any of that.
I really, truly didn't, which is so weird because I think about everything, overthink about everything.
But in that moment, before I even got out of the car and went into our house, I was tapping out And being like I believe that we are sisters.
And I mean, God, and then I, you know, I sent the message and the rest of.
That day is kind of this whirlwind where I'm processing with Christopher the fact that I just found my sister.
You know, Quinn is also kind of hearing some of this.
He's only four years old.
And so we're trying to kind of explain to him in ways that would make sense for a four-year-old.
But it's only maybe three hours before...
Everything's happening so fast.
It's so fast.
It's like years, decades, decades.
And then suddenly in the hyperspeed of a couple hours, all of this is unfolding.
Life does that sometimes, huh?
It does that.
Yeah, it does that.
And yeah, my phone rings.
And my sister.
My sister is on the phone and she has this like warm and confident voice and she goes.
So what can you tell me?
Because she has, I mean, she doesn't know anything about the context.
Um, And so I said, when my mom, Deborah Clark, was 18 years old, she got pregnant and she placed that baby for adoption.
I believe that baby is you.
And I remember very quickly feeling like I needed to let her know that our mom had died.
I was very aware that there was this like moment of anticipation where she was potentially had this opportunity to hope that she was about to meet her mother.
And I just felt like I needed to kind of swiftly let her know all of it at once.
And so I told her that our mother had died.
Did you say our mother?
I didn't.
Because I was so uncertain about what language she used at the time.
Of course.
Yeah, that's why I asked.
So uncertain.
Yeah.
I think I said that she died.
But this was interesting.
Kathy said, I hate to ask this, but how did my mother die?
My mother, yeah.
My mother.
And it was, I mean, oh.
Shocking and thrilling to hear her refer to her in that way without any kind of caveat.
Like it wasn't my birth mom or my biological mother.
It was my mom.
Wow.
And we... went over the basics of our lives.
She told me that she was 57, that she lived in Atlanta, that she ran a call center, that she had three sons and seven grandkids.
And She told me that she was raised by an amazing adoptive family.
And she said, I've lived a blessed life.
I've lived a very blessed life.
And I believed her.
It just came across that that was true.
I mean, I think I might know the answer to this question just from how you're describing Kathy, but in this or in early conversations with her, did you get the sense from Kathy that she was carrying any anger or resentment at your mother for placing her up for adoption?
No.
No.
Which, you know, was surprising to me.
Sure.
You know, the way that Kathy spoke of her adoptive mom was very glowingly.
She was extremely close to her, Marguerite.
And...
You know, she really talked about how her mom made her feel safe in the world, how she had a great sense of security with her.
I also think it's important to note that her adoptive mom was Black.
Yeah. really gave her a strong sense of herself as a Black woman.
And so she lived so much of her childhood really feeling like she belonged.
Wow.
That is the best thing you could possibly hear ever.
Yeah, absolutely.
What kind of questions did Kathy ask about your, as in your and her mom?
I'm curious what she was curious about.
Yeah.
I mean, she wanted to know everything, right?
Of course.
It's like I felt such a sense of pressure to sort of like present our mom to her.
Like I was writing her LinkedIn profile on a cosmic scale.
Like it's like this is like the only way for Kathy to know our mom is through me.
And so, like, I have to try to convey to her who she was as a person, right?
That's a lot of pressure, too.
It is a lot of pressure.
Right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I try, you know, I tried in those early conversations to kind of just give her a big sweep of who she was, that she was artsy and creative and so deeply empathetic and kind, and that she was an avid gardener and that nature was her church and, like um, she was incredibly intelligent, very sharp, kind of tough.
She wouldn't take any shit from any man.
And I remember saying that to Kathy and Kathy saying I think our moms would have gotten along very well.
The four of you in a room would be very cool.
Oh, yes.
Oh, my gosh.
If only.
If only.
Yeah.
I tried to bring her to life as best I could, you know.
I mean, I'm sure you did her justice.
And I also want to know, eventually you and Kathy meet in person.
And I do want, I would love for you to describe to me what it is like to hug, be in the presence of this sister.
Who is real?
I mean, she's right in front of you.
What was that like?
Yeah, it was incredible.
I mean, we had spent months kind of emailing back and forth and talking on the phone.
And then I finally booked a trip out there to Atlanta.
And I remember like stepping out of my rental car and it was like a humid night.
And the cicadas were buzzing.
And she called hello to me from the top of her driveway.
And she just walked across the driveway to me.
And we hugged.
And I remember feeling...
She's a little bit shorter than me.
And her head brushed my cheek in exactly the same kind of way that my mom would.
Like they're the same exact height.
And I remember feeling like I was hugging her for myself.
And I was hugging her for our mom.
It was magic.
I mean, it was one of those magical moments.
It sounds – I mean it sounds magical, because it is and beautiful and connective and healing in all these ways.
And I also wonder if there was any difficulty, like any –
I don't know, like if there was some friction somewhere for you in all of this discovery and this connection.
Oh, yeah.
I mean, it was a total roller coaster of emotion.
Like, the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.
Like, you know, to go that weekend...
From sitting cross-legged on my sister's bed, facing each other, having this moment, this sisterly moment that I'd never gotten to have to, then meeting her three sons and her seven grandkids, and
Oh, my gosh, how incredible.
But then there was also this kind of fall that happened at one point during that weekend, because on the one hand, it felt like I was finding my mom again in the world.
Like, here are her biological daughter, her biological grandkids, her biological great-grandkids.
Wow, wow.
At the same time, it felt like I was losing her again because they weren't hers.
They didn't know her.
They hadn't grown up around her.
And so, yeah, they were of her, but they weren't hers.
And so there was there was a lot of pain in that kind of contradiction, right?
Like the beauty of discovery, but then the pain of really reckoning with the loss that was also there.
Meeting Kathy.
Learning more about her story makes you curious.
Even more curious about this time in your mom's life when she was pregnant, the home that she went to, the mental institution.
It's at this point that you decide to go searching for answers yourself.
Yes.
I think that as soon as I learned that Kathy had lived a blessed life, as she put it, suddenly I was able to look toward my mom's experience back in 1965 and have questions about it.
Because you know all these pressing questions I'd had about my sister and is she okay, and where is she?
These were answered suddenly.
And so suddenly I could have curiosity about our mom.
We'll be back in just a moment.
Stay with us.
Truly.
Within days of finding Kathy, books about the history of homes for unwed mothers in the pre-Roe era started piling up on my desk.
I am a journalist.
I'm inclined to research.
And I dove in obsessively.
And very quickly learned that my mom was one of an estimated 3 million women who placed their babies for adoption between 1950 and 1975 in the United States.
And 1.5 million of those women were sent away to homes for unwed mothers.
That's a staggering statistic.
It is.
It is.
And What I came to learn is basically that, as soon as these quote unquote unwed mothers started to show, they were hidden away behind the walls of these homes.
And the idea was that the fact of their pregnancy would be hidden from neighbors and extended parents, family and friends, that they would stay there until they could give birth and place their babies for adoption, and then they'd come back.
They'd sort of they'd hide from this shame and then they'd come back and then just keep living their lives.
Yeah, and they were told they were lied to they.
They were told that they would be able to move on and forget as though it had never happened.
And the idea was that they would have a second shot at becoming proper women and mothers and wives, that they would be kind of redirected toward marriage and the nuclear family.
Specifically about your mom's story, your mom had told you that her father had sent her away.
What more did you learn about her specific experience in this home?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, I learned so much from reading the first-person testimony from this era.
And sadly, so many of these women's experiences are so much the same, right?
And so while I couldn't go and ask my mom about her specific experience—
There was this pretty universal experience, which was that these adoptions were pressured.
That they were coerced, that they were sometimes forced, that these women were oftentimes sat down and given a piece of paper and they were told write a list of what you can offer this baby.
Now write a list of what a married couple can offer this baby.
Because these babies were then placed for adoption with married couples.
And it was all a very intentional system meant to reinforce marriage and the nuclear family, and specifically the white nuclear family.
And shame.
Yeah.
And most of the women who were sent away were white, because black unwed mothers at that time were expected to raise their own children, in part because of racist stereotypes about Black women's hypersexuality, which ruled out the possibility of redemption.
But white women were slated for redemption, you know, through these homes and then through being rerouted into marriage.
But I mean, it's so this is this is really important.
It's like in this research and in immersing yourself in these firsthand accounts, you'd always kind of assumed it sounds like that your mom giving your sister Kathy up for adoption was a choice.
Yes.
But you're finding out that does not seem like the full story.
Yeah.
Yeah, I'd kind of seen her as like, That she'd faced a bad predicament.
That she got pregnant as a teenager in the 60s.
But then I came to see that actually she'd been pulled into the gears of this system that was really designed to control women's sexuality.
And that there was not what I would call a choice involved like that.
Choice requires meaningful options.
Mm-hmm.
And then this notion, like you said, that they were told these women who had these babies.
You'll forget this and you will move on and offered no support, which also probably I mean you tell me, but your mom's later breakdown, emotional breakdown, probably makes more sense to you what she went through there as well.
Absolutely.
And I came to find that so many women who were sent away struggled with mental health issues.
They struggled with PTSD. substance abuse, they were traumatized.
And that was completely enlightening to understand my mom as having been traumatized, right?
That she was traumatized by this bigger system that traumatized so many women in that era.
And that separated babies from their mothers, too, you know?
It completely shifted my understanding of what she'd been through.
It strikes me that you're learning all of this.
You're getting such a deeper understanding of your mom's experience.
And I would think the person you want to talk to about all of this is your mom, right?
Yeah.
But I mean, this is the great sadness of losing someone we love.
Is that you?
I mean you can't.
You're learning all of this and she's not there.
That must have been, that must have been extremely hard.
Yes, it was.
And I think part of the hardness too was like, of course there was the piece of like oh, so desperately wanting her to get to meet her daughter, wanting her to see us coming together.
But there was also the piece of her not ever really, I think coming to understand what had happened to her.
Like.
I don't think she ever really fully came to understand.
But you in you know, years later you're uncovering that she is part of a I mean not a generation is probably the wrong word but this group of women.
Your mom was not alone in her experience.
Yeah.
And that feels powerful, too.
Oh, yeah.
But she never got to understand that.
No, and I think she carried her guilt.
And she never got to heal her trauma.
She never got to...
Yeah, come to terms with what had really happened back then.
She blamed herself.
If she had ever had the chance to kind of find community with these other women who'd gone through pretty much the exact same thing.
Oh, yeah.
You know, I...
Who knows if she'd gotten to live for longer, like what her journey would have been like in terms of coming to understand this past.
Like, you know, I like to believe that she would have eventually come to this kind of understanding.
And it is it feels bizarre.
To be here without her and kind of trying to tell her who she was and what happened to her, you know.
What do you think your mom would say, Deb Clark, if she could see you and Kathy now?
I think she'd say, what a hoot.
You know, as she would say, you know, I think she would have such a sense of delight seeing us come together.
Did you feel like all of this you were doing for your mom?
Mm hmm.
Yeah, I mean, there's this interesting triangulation, I feel like, where I am loving my sister as my sister.
I'm loving my sister as my mother's daughter.
I'm also loving my sister for my mother as a mother myself, you know.
But then I'm also kind of like bringing my mom's love to Kathy, like sharing with her who she was and kind of how she even poured her excessive love, you know, into me.
You are a conduit of all this love.
Here's, I guess, maybe my final question.
Mother's Day, of course, is coming up.
How do you feel about that?
Do you do anything special for Mother's Day?
You know, to be honest, Mother's Day... just side swipes me every year.
It's like every year I know it's coming.
I know that every year it's hard.
I know that every year I am just kind of overtaken by grief for my mom.
And yet every year I kind of think that it's going to be different.
And that it'll be fine that I'm a mom now, too.
Like, I get to celebrate with my kid.
But it's just one of those days that I'm starting to accept it's a day where I am feeling good.
Grief, which is also love.
You know, grief is love like that.
That is gonna always, I think, be part of Mother's Day for me is the loss of my mom and the love for my mom.
And so I am pretty certain it's gonna be that way this year.
But guess what?
You can call Kathy and say, yes, happy Mother's Day, sis.
I'm missing our mom right now.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Which is tremendous.
I mean, it's really what a hoot.
What a hoot.
I mean, really like you know that was so.
Our mom is like just she just had this ability to delight in silliness and in life's surprises and, you know, in the poetry of life.
And man, I feel like this qualifies as the poetry of life.
Tracy Clark Flory, thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
Tracy's book, My Mother's Daughter, Finding Myself in My Family's Fractured Past, is out May 5th.
The Modern Love team is Davis Land, Elisa Gutierrez, Lynn Levy, Reva Goldberg, and Sarah Curtis.
This episode was produced by Reva Goldberg and edited by Lynn Levy.
Our mix engineer was Daniel Ramirez.
Original music in this episode by Marion Lozano, Diane Wong, and Dan Powell.
Dan also composed our theme music.
The Modern Love column is edited by Daniel Jones, and Mia Lee is the editor of Modern Love Projects.
Special thanks to Cella Bugbee.
If you'd like to submit an essay or a tiny love story to The New York Times, we have the instructions in our show notes.
I'm Anna Martin.
Thanks for listening.
