My daughter puts her arms around me, her brown eyes soft and beckoning. Her rounded belly and motherly curves rest against me, and for a moment I choke up. She is pregnant with a girl baby whose middle name will be Joy like mine. She will be my first granddaughter, and my second grandchild.

I was named Joy by

my great grandmother, Blanche, the mother of my grandmother Lulu, who spent much of her childhood living with Blanche’s mother. When Lulu was a young woman, she abandoned her daughter Josephine. Josephine abandoned me when I was four years old, leaving me with her mother. What a heritage!

When I look at my daughter, I see the images of my foremothers in my mind-my beautiful but insensitive mother, my intelligent, breaking-the-rules grandmother. I remember their terrible fights and broken dishes that went flying when my mother came to visit, and I think of my grandmother’s deathbed. I think of how my mother didn’t want anyone to know she had a child, and how I tried to win her love until she died. I was able to break the chains of abandonment, but I still carry within me the memories of these passionate but disturbed women whose genes I carry. I am the last remaining witness to know and remember this heritage. We are the first mother-daughter generation to hug, kiss, talk over our disagreements, apologize, forgive, and have a loving relationship. For this I give thanks every day.

My grandmother and mother didn’t want

grandchildren either. My children were not welcomed, and my mother made it clear the few times she saw my children, they were to keep their identity

a secret too. It woke me up to how cruel and heartless she was. —achieveezine.com