There is a unique education that comes from being the daughter of a woman who loves love.

She never hid her tears, but she never let me carry her weight, either. She’d cry into a mug of tea after putting me to bed, then wake up with mascara-smudged eyes and make me pancakes shaped like Mickey Mouse. The storyline of that season was resilience . This is where it got complicated. I became a teenager, which meant I became an expert on everything—including my mother’s terrible taste in men.

I’m not talking about the sanitized, cookie-cutter version of romance you see in commercials. I’m talking about the messy, hopeful, heartbroken, and hilarious reality of growing up as the sidekick in my mother’s romantic storylines.

And in doing so, she accidentally taught me everything I know about the human heart. When you are five, you believe your mother is a superhero. When you are five and your mother is single, you also believe she is a princess looking for her prince.

My mother didn’t just date. She narrated .