Mariska Hargitay

How can you not send me an anonymous birthday card?

I just wanted some acknowledgement, but there was never any.

And then I remember my stepmother was so beautiful because the day that I said, Mom, did you know?

Did you know?

And she said, very elegantly, I might add, all I know

is that your father feels that you're his daughter.

And I thought that was so gorgeous because that was true.

And so now again, of course,

All my life I've had to make peace with my story, but I look at it now, I look at you, I look at people like us that are driven by empathy and compassion and connection, and our pasts are what made us the way we are now.

So I do look at it like a gift.

We all have secrets, we all have skeletons in our closet, but if we look at them

With disciplined curiosity, many times we can get to the other side.

But that's how I felt because there was curiosity, but it was fearful curiosity and judgmental curiosity at the beginning, going, how could you do that?

How could you do that?

To all of them, I said that.

That's exactly right.

It's just this little kind of wonderful thing to be able as an adult to have maternal feelings for your parent.

That's exactly right.

Me too.

And introduce her to the world in a new way.