CSM: Constantly Seeking Mother

Words by Nicole Garelick

“I can't watch you lift that weight anymore—you're going to destroy your back.”

The woman beside me stops mid-rep and steps in. We've never spoken. Her jet-black hair is pulled into one of those impossibly high ponytails only women who color-code their calendars seem able to master. She’s wearing a tidy stack of gold bracelets that somehow look both stylish and practical.

“Set that down. Twenty pounds? What are you thinking?” she demands.

I freeze, as if I’ve broken a sacred rule. Without hesitation, she comes around behind me and starts rearranging my body like I’m a mannequin. “Your stance needs to be wider, like this.” She nudges my hips, shifts my leg. “Good. Now use this.”

She hands me a cheerful, almost mocking, sunny-yellow seven-pound weight. “Start here before you hurt yourself.”

Up until now, I’ve been totally mute, following directions like an obedient apprentice.

“Are you…an instructor?” I finally squeak.

“No, I’ve just been strength training for years,” she replies.

(I want to say I’ve been doing it for years too. Apparently with catastrophic form.)

She’s one of those ageless unicorns who could be anywhere between 35 and 55, but she clears it up immediately. “I’m 53.” She says it like a flex. She looks incredible. Like someone who has conquered every obstacle life has thrown at her and still had time to moisturize.

“You look amazing,” I tell her. She accepts the compliment like someone who hears it often. I instantly decide I want to be her. I want her certainty, her efficiency, her triceps.

“Okay, now imagine your bicep is the only thing working,” she instructs. Suddenly we’re doing hammer curls together, my new unsolicited personal trainer. “Perfect. My sister was visiting from Frankfurt a few weeks ago. She’s your age, mid-thirties. You look like her. She was also doing everything wrong.”

I laugh because honestly, what a relief. I’m not the only member of the Doing Everything Wrong club.

She carries me through the entire core section, holding a flawless side plank while I collapse five seconds in. At the end of class, we finally exchange names.

“Next time I see you, I don’t want to see any 20-pound weights,” she says, zipping up her fancy gym bag.

“I promise,” I say, sounding very much like a child released back to her parent.

I head downstairs and meet my friend in the lobby. “I just had the best workout of my life,” I announce, glowing. “The woman next to me told me I was doing absolutely everything wrong and corrected me the entire class.”

“And you liked that?” my friend asks, genuinely concerned.

“I didn’t just like it. I wanted her to adopt me.”

My friend just stares at me.

Here’s the thing: I have a condition. I call it CSM: Constantly Seeking Mother. Not in the DSM-5, but it could be. It’s been chronic since my mom died over 12 years ago.

I latch onto anyone: my therapist, my gynecologist, the woman at the dry cleaner, the lady in front of me at the grocery store with her fleet of reusable tote bags. I’m forever scanning the world for a woman who might adjust not just my squat form, but my entire life posture. One day someone is there watching over you every moment, and then suddenly they’re not, and the dependable look of concern disappears too. Even the kind that feels more like criticism—maybe the most motherly form of all.

I lost my mom right when I’d finally started asking her real questions. We’d just gotten to that part of our relationship where I was intent on listening, and then she was gone. I wanted to know how she, a television producer, navigated being the only woman in the newsroom in the 70s and 80s. How she knew my dad was the one. How she was so certain about her path.

Now the questions have multiplied. How did you clean bottles for twins without going insane? What did you do when you ran out of ideas for entertaining us? How did you drive kids around using a physical map? How did you do it? How do I?

But sometimes it’s more than the questions. It’s the proactive care that came from a mom: the brownies you never asked for, the encouragement you didn’t know you needed, the advice that quietly changes your life. Hold and cherish your friendships. There is nothing like a mother’s love—at least there was nothing like my mother’s. And the only way I’ve figured out how to reach for it is to keep searching for women who might fill small pieces of the endless space she left behind.

So another woman choosing to guide me in class, even though she had absolutely no obligation to? Swoon. She could’ve ignored me and let me blow out my hamstring. Instead, she took this small, error-prone bird under her wing, and I reveled in it. This felt different from the usual unsolicited advice that makes me want to scream. This cascade of corrections felt like care, and made me feel looked after in a way I haven’t felt in years.

Bless her. And honestly? I can’t wait for leg day.

I have a feeling there’s a lot more she could help me fix.

Nicole Garelick is a Chicago-based writer and the creator of The Performance Plan, a Substack newsletter about the comedy of getting life wrong. She lives with her husband and two young kids, which gives her a lot of material.