I've been told my whole life how much I favor my mom. I'm her mirror. Which is ironic because the relationship my mother has with mirrors is a relationship she passed on to her mirror-image daughter unknowingly.

I was shopping with my mom recently and she said something about losing 5 pounds. Don't you notice?, she asked earnestly -- rightfully wanting her hard work eating right and exercising to be acknowledged.

I don't see you enough to notice 5 pounds, I replied nonchalantly, barely looking up from the clearance rack I was deep-diving into.

That means you should notice even more... She looked discouraged. 

This conversation mimics a hundred (maybe even a thousand) conversations I've had with my mom in my 28 years of life. Conversations about weight, about body image, about a negative view of her outer self that no one else sees but her. Conversations I imagine she had with her mother and that Nana had with Grandmother, and that a million mothers have had for ions before. Conversations that, until recently, I didn't realize had impacted me so heavily.

What we were really having was a conversation about the person only we see in the mirror.