Happy Mother's Day, Lorelai Gilmore.

A day to celebrate mothers and motherhood. The women who raised us shaped us and gave us their own personal slice of neurosis. Having a mother is not a universal experience, even though, at one point, I believe that we all had one. Some hold on with all their might and stay by your side while others love you from a distance like their mothers taught them.

No one person shares the same experience with motherhood, but thanks to Amy Sherman Palladino and Lauren Graham, we can share a mother figure.

I’m 33, which puts me in the prime age group to be a Gilmore Girls fan. As a 2000’s teen, lover of pop culture and obscure punk music, looking back now, I would have been a perfect audience member for Gilmore Girls. But yet, somehow it was off of my radar. In some ways, I pushed it off, unaware of what the show truly was. On the surface, it seemed too soft, too girly, too…emotional. I was busy watching the early days of WB superhero shows like Smallville and when a commercial would come on for Gilmore Girls, I would roll my eyes. I didn’t want to be a girly girl, I wanted to be whatever the opposite of “pick me” was circa 2003.

Life went on and 20 years later, I found myself reaching out for comfort. At this time in my adult life, everything seemed upside down. I was jumping jobs and apartments, and my parents had split up after 30 years together. In a lot of ways, I was looking for something stable to come home to.

It’s strange getting to know your parents as people, outside of all the years of caring for you while simultaneously putting you through hell. You start to wonder if you really knew them at all outside of one another and the four walls of your childhood home.

I was constantly asking myself questions about my relationship with my own mother. Did I know the person she was now? Did I like the person she was now? Can I learn to love her for everything she is and everyone she isn’t?

Grasping for a sense of family and belonging, I turned on Netflix and entered Stars Hollow for the first time. 

I met Lorelai Gilmore. A woman about my age who touched something in my soul. A woman who was flawed and exceedingly more dramatic with every word she said. I watched Lorelai navigate being a woman in her 30s who was still figuring it out. Figuring everything out. She didn’t have her dream job, a significant other, or any money in the bank, but boy did she have heart. That heart and a sense of wit to rival my own pulled me in and didn’t let go.

I watched Lorelai question her place in the world, often without concrete footing to land on. Nothing was wrapped up in a bow for Lorelai at the end of each episode. Often, she ended up further away from where she was going. She took detour after detour to find her fate. This was something I could deeply relate to. Making steps, but not knowing where they lead. Having your ambition guide you into fantasy, but still maintaining a 30-something cynicism about knowing better about the world. 

But all this to say, if Lorelai didn’t have everything figured out at 33, maybe I didn’t have to either.

It’s incredible how works of fiction enter our lives and mirror back all our own flaws, fears and shortcomings. They wake us up to life's possibilities where we can test drive our own journeys through the eyes of someone else's work.

I may have not grown up watching Gilmore Girls, but Lorelai Gilmore raised me. 

She held me when everything was falling apart and reminded me that there was still time. Time to achieve all I’ve ever wanted, time to meet my person, time to meet myself.

They say you can’t go home again, but with Lorelai Gilmore, maybe we can. 

And the great thing is, with Lorelai and the world of Stars Hollow, with the press of a button, we can always start over again. As many times as we need to, we’ll walk through our 30’s. Both our hearts and coffee cups full.