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When I was younger and would think about myself as a mother someday, I’d imagine myself as the “fun mom” on my hands and knees playing with the kids, as the “involved mom” volunteering in the classroom and taking cupcakes to parent teacher association meetings, as the “friends’ mom” with a house full of teenagers hanging out and being loud as I supply snacks periodically. I never pictured myself as the “sick mom.” Yet this is what life had in store for me. In the early years of my children’s lives, I was very active and involved, just as I had imagined when I was younger. However, as they entered elementary school and I became sick, my ideas of what it meant to be a mom had to shift. At first, I struggled. I wondered if I was still a good mom, even if I was stuck in bed a good portion of the time, didn’t have the stamina to always play with my kids the way they wanted, and had to turn to frozen meals instead of cooking from scratch. I had to confront and unravel a lot of internalized...