Laura Friedman Williams
1 min readMar 16, 2022

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Beautiful and moving piece. It’s so interesting the way our childhood trauma shapes us as parents. I was the opposite of you - never wanted a boy! I had a girl first and was crushed to find out my second was a boy. My father died when I was five, my mom remarried and I had a complicated relationship with my new father. I was all about the mother/daughter bond to the exclusion of anything else. Of course, my son turned out to be nothing like what I expected and he brings me joy and delight in a way that is very different from the joy and delight my two daughters bring me. He is 19 now and I am grateful everyday that I was given a chance to mother a son despite my fervent desire not to. It’s so lovely that now you’re ready for whatever life brings you in the way of daughters in law and grandchildren etc. Sometimes experience itself is the only way we can change our minds.

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Laura Friedman Williams
Laura Friedman Williams

Written by Laura Friedman Williams

Author of AVAILABLE: A Very Honest Account of Life After Divorce (Boro/HarperUK June ‘21; Harper360 May ‘21). Mom of three, diehard New Yorker.

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