# @michigandaily on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/DW6d0oXgQEP
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/62945176-michigandaily-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/4aed1b2168.jpg
- **Posted:** 2026-04-09T14:01:54.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** The Michigan Daily (@michigandaily) — https://gondola.cc/michigandaily

## Caption

#Statement: Toward the end of June of this past summer, I invited my mom to come to the beach with me. We set off at about 2 p.m., baseball caps and books in hand, and drove 45 minutes to the North Shore of Boston. We played ’90s rock the entire time with the windows down. 

As I think about what is a normal part of growing up, I’ve started feeling a serious need to understand my parents as the people they were before they had kids. When they stopped being responsible for almost everything in my life, it opened a new vision of them as individuals with their own histories, ambitions and uncertainties. What were they like? What were they interested in? On my beach outing with my mom, specifically, I found myself wondering: Who did she date? It’s amazing to think that your parents dated and loved other people before they met each other; for me, at least, it almost feels illegal. It clashes with the fixed, parent-only roles I had always seen them in — my mom, my dad — that revolved around me. And while my dad has always been open in sharing his romantic past, I realized I knew nothing about my mom’s. So, toes in the sand, I asked. Or, as my older sister puts it, pried.

To read more, click the link in our bio.

✍️: Julia Arboleda
🎨: Ella Flores

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- **Likes:** 125
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## Tags

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