As friends, family, and even strangers begin asking when she and her husband will have children, Bella confronts a question she can no longer ignore:
How do I create life without surrendering my own or perpetuating inherited pain? At thirty-six, after years of postponing motherhood, Bella navigates a high-risk pregnancy. She fears pregnancy’s demands on her body, the loss of her creative identity, and the possibility of passing on intergenerational trauma. As her curiosity about family secrets deepens, Bella delves into her maternal lineage through interviews, letters, and diaries to uncover a century-old rupture that altered the course of her family. Yet she discovers more than trauma. She finds repair—a lineage of women who carried love, resilience, music, and hope alongside grief—and whose courage helped reunite a family fractured across decades and continents. A braided narrative told through micro and flash stories, this memoir explores inheritance, motherhood, memory, and the possibility that understanding the past can transform what we choose to carry into the future.
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“Where the spirit does not work with the hand there is no art.”
—Leonardo da Vinci
—Leonardo da Vinci
This is the work.