I wish I had beautiful stories about my mom. I don’t — but that doesn’t mean she didn’t teach me or give me the chance to become the kind of mother I am to my daughter.
I recently learned that a granddaughter’s eggs begin forming in her grandmother’s womb, when the mother is still a fetus. That image — three generations held within one body — feels like poetry. A reminder that we are connected, even in silence.
Generationally, survival has shaped my matrilineal line. My great-grandmother forced my grandmother to marry a lighter-skinned cousin — a man she did not love. My grandmother migrated from Brazil’s northeast to Rio de Janeiro after her mother died at age 43. My grandmother became a mother without the support of her own. My mother was raised by her older sister, in the shadow of poverty, absence and violence. There are no photos of my mom with her mother; no memories of warmth passed down. By 16, I felt my mother’s distance. By 20, I left Brazil and never returned.
Still, we shared what we could. One month before my mother died, I happened to be home in Brazil. My mother had COVID and I was living with my aunt — the same sister who raised her. It was an unexpected goodbye, quietly woven into time — the final closeness we didn’t know we needed.
As I approach my 50s, I honor a lineage of women who endured racism, patriarchy and displacement. They gave me breath and the strength to create something gentler. I dedicated my doctoral thesis to them. And because of my daughter, Breana, I keep learning how to break cycles.
Magical people come from magical people — even if their magic went unrecognized.
– dr. ananda de oliveira mirilli, co-creator of nINA Collective Cooperative
Read more from our May/June 2025 feature on mother-daughter bonds here.
