You know those features in Sunday magazines 'my amazing Mom and me' or 'my Mom is my best friend and my favorite person'.....they can't ALL be made up, can they? That's what I want to be able to give to my kids, a Mommy they absolutely adore and love deeply and feel close to and can talk to about anything. I don't have that privilege with my own mother but I desperately want to give that gift to my two daughters. It's an uphill battle because, bluntly, I don't have any female role models in my family of how to be the kind of mother I want to be. That's not to say the women in my family don't have their merits - of course they do - but it's much easier said than done, choosing how you want to be, when it's so different from your own upbringing and genetic programming. The self-awareness I have. But it's a lifetime's work to mould yourself, sometimes even beat yourself, into the shape you want to become. And sometimes I really feeling I'm failing.