"Taking Mom out for a shopping spree!"
Someone in the comments had asked:
"Your mom treats you that badly and you're still buying her stuff?"
She'd replied:
"This is my mother-in-law. I'm so lucky I met my husband, because he gave me this amazing woman. She's the one who showed me what a mother's love actually feels like. She's a thousand times better than my real mom."
When I read that reply, something slammed into my chest. A sharp, crushing ache that wouldn't let go.
My husband and I built everything from nothing. We scraped and clawed our way through years of hardship to get where we are.
But we never once let our daughter go without.
When Summer was born, my mother-in-law sneered that she was just a girl and wanted us to give her away.
My husband and I fought tooth and nail to keep her. He nearly disowned his own parents over it.
When we left to build the business, no matter how grueling things got, we kept her with us.
Our apartment was barely a hundred square feet. We slept on the floor so she could have the only bed.
To give her a better life, we poured every cent of our savings into sending her to the best private schools.