Last year I sat in the audience, fretting that this annual Mothers Day event would be a pollyanna night of mothers cooing about how much they loved their baby from the minute they first met. Given my own journey of being a stepmother to my kids and estranged from my mother, I didn't think I could stomach the night. Instead, though, what I heard were stories of an adopted daughter's resentment at being taken from her culture, a divorced lesbian mother's relationship with her children, a daughter whose mother was crippled in an earthquake disaster. In short, the storytellers brought well-crafted, polished stories that were deep, touching, at times humorous, but most importantly, authentic. If you're in the Burbank area, I hope you'll come out and hear my story alongside these others -- stories united by the simple fact of parenting and/or having parents.