Behind the Chair: The Women Who Made Me

There’s something about becoming a mother that makes you revisit every woman who helped raise you.

Not just your mother — but all the women who quietly shaped your life along the way. The ones who made you feel safe. The ones who made homes feel warm. The ones who taught you softness, strength, beauty, routine, love, resilience. The ones who mothered you even when they didn’t have to.

I grew up with a single mom. A hardworking single mom.

She worked full-time doing hair, eventually running her own business and owning her own salon, but somehow she still made it to everything. Sports games. Choir concerts. School events. She volunteered, showed up, stayed involved, and still made time for quality moments with me in between all the chaos.

As kids, we can be so critical of our mothers. We expect them to be everything at all times without realizing they are growing up alongside us too. Doing motherhood for the very first time while often silently carrying their own heartbreak, exhaustion, fear, or uncertainty.

Looking back now, I realize how much of my own motherhood came directly from her.

The loving side. The nurturing side. The instinct to care deeply for people.

I watched how she treated her clients behind the chair, how she loved her family, how she softened herself after long days instead of hardening. I remember the scents of her getting ready in the morning — Neutrogena body oil, Eternity perfume, Aveda products lining the bathroom counter. Calvin Klein outfits that made her seem effortlessly beautiful to me. I always wanted to be like her.

As little girls, we learn womanhood by watching the women around us. We learn how to speak to ourselves. How to carry ourselves. How to love people. My mom represented all of that for me.

And when life changed and my parents split homes, another woman entered my life — my stepmom.

She was young, beautiful, happy, and one of the first women who made me realize motherhood didn’t have to be biological to be real. She made my time with my dad feel longer, lighter, safer. She turned a house into a home.

She taught me little things I still remember now: that crepes are best with lemon and brown sugar, that malt-o-meal before bed somehow fixes everything, that routines can feel comforting instead of restrictive. She watched Sex and the City with me, cooked incredible meals, loved animals deeply, and somehow managed to be strict in exactly the way I needed at that age.

Middle school and high school could have felt heavy and unstable for me, but she helped turn those years into some of my favorite memories.

I tell her this often now, but she truly helped shape me.

Both of my grandmothers did too.

They were loving, present, comforting women who made me feel like I could tell them anything without judgment. There’s something life-changing about women who know how to listen without making you feel small.

When I was fifteen, my mom met the person she would spend the rest of her life with. Watching her finally be loved well healed something in me too. A few years later, I got a baby brother, and seeing my mom raise him felt like looking through a window into my own childhood — the years I was too young to remember clearly.

At seventeen, during a difficult season of life, I moved in with my best friend’s family.

I will never forget what that home felt like.

It was clean and calm and loving. There were fruit plates in the kitchen, hugs that never felt forced, and space for me without ever making me feel like a burden. At a time where everything around me felt uncertain, this woman made me feel like I still deserved stability and care.

How incredible are women, really?

Later, I moved to North Carolina searching for a fresh start, and there too, another mother figure found me through friendship. Her mom became someone I loved deeply in a short amount of time. Even though our lives only overlapped for a few years, I’ll never forget the way she loved me.

Then came New Jersey.

The place where my life changed forever.

I first lived with my aunt, uncle, and cousins — family I barely knew before then. My aunt welcomed me into her home and into her world so effortlessly. She showed me her beach town, her routines, her family life, and I remember thinking she was one of the best mothers I had ever seen.

Not because she was perfect, but because she loved fiercely.

She would do anything for her children. And for me.

I was young, messy, heartbroken, trying to figure out who I was while falling in love with the Jersey Shore and building a life at the same time. Eventually, I became a mother there too.

I didn’t know it then, but motherhood would save my life.

It gave me the courage to leave a relationship that was breaking me down. I was young, pregnant, scared, and unsure of myself, but my family stepped in and carried me through it. My aunt, uncle, and cousins loved me and my daughter in a way I had been taught I didn’t deserve.

They reminded me who I was.

And eventually, I made my way here — where I met my husband.

The first man who didn’t fail me in the ways I had grown used to expecting. The first man who made space for me to fully become the mother I always wanted to be.

He helped me realize that even in the messy, imperfect moments, my children are lucky to have me.

And I know how fortunate I am for that.

Because not everyone gets that kind of love.

When I look back on my life now, motherhood has been woven through every chapter of it. Sometimes through birth mothers. Sometimes through stepmothers, grandmothers, aunts, friends’ moms, or women who simply opened their homes and hearts to me when I needed them most.

Women shaped my life.

Motherhood shaped my life.

And now, raising daughters of my own, I know there will be women who help shape their stories too.

I only hope they meet women as remarkable as the ones who helped raise me.

Heather xo