In 2001, I lost the world I knew. Twenty-five years later, I’m accidentally rebuilding it. 

“I think people think you’re my mother,” my six-year-old niece whispered to me as we walked through the parking lot toward CVS. 

“I think you’re right,” I said, smiling back at her impish grin that suggested we were pulling one over on the world. I had picked her up from school and was indulging her request to buy fake nails for our sleepover. She gripped my hand tightly, as a daughter would. We proudly walked through the automatic sliding doors, as one.

I don’t have children of my own, which means my niece is the beneficiary of my pent-up maternal love and obsession. She was born in 2020, and four months later, I left my job as the executive producer of a morning news show in New York and moved to Los Angeles. It was the first time I’d disrupted my ambitious climb up the media ladder, and when my feet landed in the California sand, my role as an aunt became the foundation of my daily life. 

Birthdays, ballet recitals, and school performances anchored my calendar. Playing hide-and-seek before dinner, getting ice cream on a Tuesday, and letting her empty my closet for dress-up replaced late-night calls, breaking news, and media dinners. Recently, when my sister traveled abroad for work, my niece wanted assurance that her “substitute mother” would be around. The phrase made me laugh, but also squeezed my heart like a vise. Because I know what........

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