For a few seconds after my mother said she could not congratulate me for “defying God’s will,” no one moved.

your daughter.”

She began to cry then, but even her crying sounded like accusation. “You don’t understand what it is to bury hope again and again. You don’t understand what it does to a woman.”

I almost laughed. “I lost four pregnancies.”

“You lost them because—”

“Finish that sentence carefully.”

She did.

That was the moment I understood there was no conversation continue reading …