Daughter of the In-Between: A Journey of Remembering Forward

I didn’t grow up with ancestral land passed down through generations.
I wasn’t raised in the old ways.
I don’t have stories passed down in circle or songs sung by the fire.
But I carry their absence like a prayer in my bones.

I am the daughter of an immigrant.
Raised in a country my mother had to survive, not rest in.
I was born into the space between,
between languages, between cultures, between who we were and who we were told we had to be.

And lately, I’ve been feeling the loss of that lineage in a way that stirs something deep.

Not just sadness,
but a longing so ancient it feels cellular.
A grief not just for what I never had,
but for what was never even spoken aloud.

I didn’t grow up with traditions to lean on,
with aunties and elders guiding the way.
I grew up in silence.
In absence.
In resilience that sometimes felt like exile.

But what if this ache… is also the beginning of a remembering?

What if I am not rootless, but re-rooting?

What if the break in tradition is not a void,
but a portal,
one that only I can walk through?

Lately, I’ve been listening more closely.
To the quiet hum beneath my grief.
To the whispers of grandmothers I never knew.
To the ache in my belly that says,
It’s time.

Time to reclaim what was lost.
Time to bless the broken chain.
Time to build an altar not of memory, but of becoming.

So, I light a candle.
I whisper the names I do not know.
I place my hands on my heart and my womb.
I let myself feel the break.
And then… I let myself feel the blessing.

Because being the first to remember is hard.
But it is holy.

I am not here to recreate the past.
I am here to remember forward.
To weave new ways of belonging from the golden threads I’m just now beginning to find.
To plant seeds in soil that wasn’t passed down,
but that I will one day bless with my own hands.

This is the walk of the lineage bearer.
The bridge between what was and what wants to be.
The one who grieves, reclaims, and reweaves,
all at once.

And if you are walking this too,
know this:

You are not alone.
You are not without roots.
You are the root.

And you are sacred.