Russian Doll, the eight-episode Netflix original series written and created by an all-women team, is a feminist version of Groundhog Day, of sorts. In it, Nadia Vulvokov (Natasha Lyonne), a wry and independent software engineer, repeats her 36th birthday over and over, winding up dead at the end of each day before waking up and repeating the cycle all over again. She gets nailed by a car, has a heart attack, falls down the stairs. She sleeps under a bridge, loses her cat, and buys a slice of watermelon. She smokes a lot. The surrounding characters are the chic, moody partiers that personify New York's East Village. Russian Doll is one of those hard-to-sum up shows that gets under your skin; it’s about cheating, addiction, friendship, a changing New York, and forgiveness. It's also a show about Nadia's deeply complex relationship with her mother (played by Chloë Sevigny). And to me, it's about me and my mother.

It wasn't until episode seven, “The Way Out,” that I fully appreciated how closely I was seeing my own experience reflected on screen. A tiny Nadia, all poofy red hair and big eyes, carries watermelons to the family car, an Alfa Romeo Spider. The year is 1991. Nadia must be about eight. Mother and daughter look uneasy, agitated; Nadia wears a baggy sweatshirt in the dead of summer, while her mother tremors in a tank top. Something isn’t right.

I didn’t want anyone to take my mom away. Even then, I knew I had to protect her.

“Can we go home now?” Nadia asks her mother from the passenger’s seat.

“What happened to my trusty sidekick?” her mother replies. Nadia gives her the same uncertain smile I must have given my mother a thousand times. Soon the backseat and trunk are filled with watermelons. To make room for more melons, Nadia’s mother dumps their winter coats onto the sidewalk and insists the bodega worker make them fit.

Instead, he asks Nadia if she’s OK.

“Why the fuck are you talking to my kid?” Nadia’s mother snaps. He shrugs, puts the melons in the trunk, and disappears. Her mother cries and tells Nadia not to “let them tear us apart.” Nadia promises. Then her mom insists Nadia get the worker fired. Later it’s revealed the sliced melons are basically all Nadia and her mom have to eat.

This scene haunted me. As a child I found myself caught in my mom’s erratic scenes more times than I care to remember. One summer afternoon, when I was about eight, my mother snorted a bunch of pills and passed out in the front seat of her boyfriend’s car while I was with her. It was still running when a man I didn’t know approached my window from the sidewalk. Looking back, I don’t think he was a day over 18.

"Kid," he said, tapping on the roof. "Is your mom fucked up?"