One of my most vivid memories of my mom is not something I’ve ever shared before. I’m 18 years old, and having a blow-out fight with her. We’re standing in the living room in my house, arguing about the senior prom. I don’t remember the exact details of the fight, but I remember my mom had been hassling me about the whole prom thing and it had been getting out of hand. I wanted her to leave me alone about it.

“Why are you making such a big deal out of this?” I yelled.

“Because I’m not going to be here for your wedding!” she yelled back.

Silence and confusion after that.

My mom was in the end stages of breast cancer, but I didn’t know that. I knew she was sick; I’d been let in on that much. But my mom hid much of her treatment and sickness from me over the 5 years she was in treatment. She never let me see her vomiting from chemotherapy, though I now know she did. She stayed in her room when she wasn’t feeling well, never letting me and my brothers know how bad it was to shield us from the hell she was living. So we could continue to be normal kids. Even now, as I type this, I’m mad at her for it. I wish I’d known. I would’ve acted differently. I would have cherished the time together instead of taking her for granted.

At least that’s what I tell myself. She died 4 months after that conversation.

Looking back, I have so many regrets about how I acted. Illness in the family sometimes forces children to grow up, and to be honest with you, I wish I’d been given that opportunity. I squandered the time I had left with her “being a normal teenager” instead of taking care of her and spending time with her, and I can only hope I would’ve known that at the age of 18.

But I don’t know and never will.

When I think about her now and what Mother’s Day means to me, I remember some things about her really well, and some things have been lost to memory. But now that I’m a mother myself, I work even harder to channel her and instill in her the good things she instilled in me. I try to do what she would have done, even though I’m not quite sure what that is. I try to imagine what her advice to me would be when dealing with and talking to my own daughters.

So this Mother’s Day, here are some of the things I think she’d want me to do:

1. Give them room to grow and space to breathe. Don’t just help them; help them help themselves. My mom was not the type to do my homework or finish my projects for me. She encouraged me to do things myself, and I can vividly remember being frustrated at times, wondering why I had the mom who wouldn’t just do it for me. Now I’m grateful I didn’t have that kind of mom; it’s allowed me to become an independent person who doesn’t back down when things get hard. I want that for my girls.

2. Teach them to love getting dressed up. Everyone that knew her knew my mom was a shopper. She loved finding beautiful things, and that was one of the things we loved to do together. We’d hide the shopping bags from my dad (sorry dad!) and bring them into the house when he wasn’t home. It was our little secret. But it gave me an appreciation for nice clothing, getting dresses up and looking put together. Today, it’s still important to me, and I can tell it is to my 2 year old too. I hope she’s my little shopping buddy one day.

3. Be yourself, even if they think you’re so uncool. This one’s for later, when my kids are older, but I know it’s coming… the conversations where my girls tell me I’m embarrassing them, even though I’m not really doing anything. I definitely had that one with my mom. My mom would probably tell me to ignore it and continue to be myself. She’d probably tell me to laugh at that and then be even more me and even more embarrassing (sorry, girls).

4. Be their mom first and friend second. At some point, situations are going to come up where I’m going to have to decide if I want to be their friend or their mom. I hope, like my mom did, I choose the former. Her guidance helped me, for the most part, to make good choices in life. It feels like even today, we as adults are presented with a fair number of decisions that could go one way or the other, and I hope I can equip my girls with the skills to make good choices.

5. Encourage them to pursue their passions. I always assumed that everyone had a mom who encouraged them to follow their dreams and do what made them happy, but as I grew up, I realized that wasn’t the case. I know for my mom, and certainly for me, was no one right path through life. If my girls want to be doctors or artists or stay at home moms, I hope I can help to guide them down those paths to success, whatever success means to them.

6. Just when you think you have nothing more to give, give more. Up until the very end of her life, my mom was doing things for everyone else. She volunteered all the time, even while going through treatment, and instilled in me a passion for community service and philanthropy. Today, it’s so important to me to give back and help others, and I hope my girls devote time in their lives for such important endeavors.

I’m never going to get time with my mom again, but I hope she can live on through me and her amazing granddaughters. I know she will.