Fragments of Home

2. What we didn’t know we were building until we matured.
5. The sacrifices our mothers make for our well-being that the world does not see.
7. Someone who has different identities, living in the in-between.
9. The emotion that motivates us to wake up every morning when nothing else could.
13. The person who gave birth to us, and one of the only ones giving us unconditional love.
14. The nagging feeling that you are not enough as a child of a single mother.
16. What society sometimes made us feel, but we were never by ourselves.
17. What we are, and wherever we go, “home” is carried on our backs.
18. What we often use to shield our stories from judgment.
19. The flawed, loud, emotional, and authentic space we built for ourselves.

1. What our mothers displayed, even when society called it a struggle.
3. The label society puts on mothers for prioritizing their well-being first.
4. The invisible line between society’s expectations and our “real” lives.
6. The word people normally say, but we have to correct it to “parent.”
8. The reason why we garner accolades for our mothers.
10. What we are trying to find now, to communicate our narrative in our own language.
11. What we switch to navigate and survive different social environments.
12. Being two different things at the same time.
14. Our family’s hopes and efforts in us to “succeed.”
15. The droplets running down our face while hearing our mother crying alone in the middle of the night.