You walk around carrying this invisible weight — this pressure on your whole spirit—because the worlds you’re trying to fit into are rejecting you in so many ways. And you think it’s your fault.

Dee Dee Blancharde was a model parent: a tireless single mom taking care of her gravely ill child. But after Dee Dee was killed, it turned out her daughter Gypsy had never been sick at all.

My mother is an urban peasant and I am my mother’s daughter. The city is our natural element. We each have daily adventures with bus drivers, bag ladies, ticket takers, and street crazies. Walking brings out the best in us.

My mother’s eyes traced what was happening with happiness of a child. When she asked my father how it was possible, he thought she was asking about the flowers, but she wasn’t. She was asking how it was possible to see this much beauty at once.

Makeda Davis emerged from more than seven years in prison to a life that is complicated, unfamiliar, and, sometimes, soul crushing.

An antique high chair; the complexities of parenting and growing.

A family stops at a Jersey travel plaza on the way to a New York medical center.

Grown siblings, relationships, and ways of seeing.

A refugee's daughter examines identity and spaces.

A girl spends time with her mentally unstable mother.

Camille Billops abandoned her four-year-old to become the artist she knew she was meant to be. Twenty years later, her daughter wanted to know: why did you leave me?

On losing your mom.

They call me the Greeter. I sell shoes at the Boca Raton Town Center mall — bedazzled stilettos and platforms, neon-strapped pumps saved for special occasions. I stand by the entrance of the store, heels dug into the carpet, tummy tucked in, and I greet people. Hi, how are you, sunshine? Have you seen our shoes today?

While visiting a new church, a teenager questions her faith.

A mother and child navigate life after a natural disaster.

Two girls connected by friendship and strange magic.

Sitting with a group of mothers who lost a child.

A child's obsession with slime; a fractured family.

A mother and daughter take a complicated trip to Central Asia.

On losing a mother and a marriage.

An investigation into prophetic dreams.

A story of truth, lies, and an American addiction.

A mother’s quest to find a diagnosis for her daughter’s mysterious condition.

Mother's Day triggers a wealth of memories and characters, past and present.

Laurie Sperring’s Staten Island nightmare.