A Lineage of Grief and Grace

Wahida – A Lineage of Grief and Grace
The ache was not mine alone. It was my mother’s. And her mother’s. And hers too.

I was born from a line of women who grieved in silence.
My grandmother, stoic and worn, carried her sorrow like the folds of her chaderi—layered, hidden, dignified. My mother, Wahida, inherited this legacy. A woman named for singularity, for being one of one. And yet, life broke her in places no one could see. A depression swallowed her voice. A psychosis stole her presence. And she never fully came back.

But I remained.

A daughter of fractured women. A witness to their pain. A vessel of their unmet longing.
This is what Mother Hunger speaks to—the longing for the mother who couldn’t nurture, who couldn’t protect, who couldn’t guide. Not because she didn’t want to. But because the war outside mirrored the war within.

I chased her absence in perfection. In overachievement. In silence. I learned to mother myself before I had breasts. I became her daughter and her guardian. I held her when she cried and learned to cry in private.But healing is not forgetting. Healing is honoring the grief that was never allowed to speak.
I am not angry anymore. I am not empty anymore.

Because I remembered: she gave me her name. She gave me her strength. And now, I give us both a new story.
One where the lineage of women doesn’t end in sorrow—but transforms through divine healing.
Because the divine feminine is not loud. She does not scream to be seen. She heals in whispers. She returns in dreams. And she speaks through me.

I am my mother’s daughter. And my grandmother’s granddaughter. And the first woman in my line who will be free.

"You were never too much. You were just too sacred for a system that couldn’t hold you.”