My daughter Lindsay is sleeping in the seat next to me as we fly to attend her friend’s wedding in Southern California. It’s a well-deserved nap—she is a kindergarten teacher and the mother of two sets of twins, ages seven and eleven. As she sleeps, memories from the last two weddings we attended together flood over me. At both of those events I drank too much and embarrassed her and my family. The memory of it makes me shudder. Today I am grateful for my five years of sobriety and the assurance that this will be a different experience.

To put the thought out of my head, I look at Lindsay. I notice that she’s wearing a thin gold band on her left hand, next to her stunning, modern platinum and diamond wedding set. It’s my mother’s wedding ring—an unremarkable circle of gold that I tied to Lindsay’s wedding bouquet almost 12 years ago to provide “something old.” The ring is the only material object that binds the three of us together—my mother, myself and Lindsay. I didn’t realize until this moment that it meant anything to her and I feel happily surprised and touched to see that she still wears it.

It saddens me that Lindsay knows next to nothing about my mother or my childhood. The intense work I continue to do around my own childhood grief and trauma has given me clarity on what I want Lindsay to know about her grandmother, Margaret “June” Newman. I haven’t told her much as I’ve worked through those memories, but someday I will. When I choose to tell her, this is what I want to say: