I was the test run.
The guinea pig.
The child who taught my parents how to be parents.
I didn’t know it then.
But I carried that role into every season of my life.
Then I became a mother.
And with it came a shock I didn’t expect—not the sleepless nights or the learning curve.
But the realization. That I was not just a mother. I was still a daughter.
Still a sister.
Still a wife.
Still trying to be a woman in her own right.
All those roles running parallel, colliding, intertwining.
I juggled them for years.
Then just as my children began stepping into their independence,
Just as I began to think maybe I could finally catch my breath—
My mother began to forget.
Her dementia didn’t come in the days of diapers and lullabies.
It came in the days of teenage moods, high school drama, and university applications.
When my children no longer needed me in the same way—
But my mother suddenly did.
And I had to turn around and mother the woman who once mothered me.
That’s when it hit me:
The Intersected Woman is not a metaphor.
She is me.
She is the woman holding both ends of life in her hands.
Teenagers at one edge—testing, learning, separating.
A mother at the other—forgetting, unraveling, returning to childlikeness.
And in the middle? Me. Trying not to disappear.
I don’t know if I’ve forgiven my parents.
But I have stopped judging them.
I know now they were improvising—just like I am.
Just like I must.
Because parenting isn’t just raising children.
It’s carrying history.
It’s holding space for growth and decay, sometimes at the same time.
This is not a story of balance.
This is a story of becoming.
Of honoring the tugs at every corner of your soul.
Of learning to live as one woman with many names.
This is the story of the Intersected Woman.
And if you are reading this, maybe it’s yours too.
