Part 3: Becoming the Ancestor

The night grows heavier. The fire in the fireplace softens into a deep orange glow — like a living heart, tired but still beating.

Sometimes I wonder if this is what becoming an ancestor feels like: this calm fire inside, this refusal to explain yourself anymore.

I don’t owe the world an apology for existing as I am — reflective, silver-haired, half-angry, half-serene. I see pain, and it hurts me. I see people hurt others, and I don’t understand why — but then I remember, this too is part of the circle. Everything is for a reason, even what breaks us.

And maybe it’s the fire in me — not from the fireplace, but from somewhere older, written in my stars — that keeps me restless. Maybe that’s what my horoscope always tried to say: I was born to question, to fight softly, to glow even in silence.

And as a mother — oh, my children are my pride. I did a damned good job, all the way we walked together as a family. I cried at times, walked through stones and glass paths, but I walked — and I still walk. Through my life as a woman who grows every time, who rises stronger, even when tired. I know my children will remember me dearly — not as perfect, but as true.

I am a good woman — the kind who, when she loves, loves entirely, even when the heart aches and the mind says run. I don’t give up fast. I stay. I’m righteous and true.

“Why do you fight so much?” I ask myself.
“Because someone has to,” comes the answer.

And maybe that’s the point. To live as a mirror for truth, not as its decoration. To grow white hair not as surrender but as evidence — I’ve been here, I’ve seen, I’ve endured, and still, I speak.

The insects still come. The critics too. Let them. They remind me that peace is earned, not granted.

Maybe the fire doesn’t burn as high as it once did — but it burns clean now. No smoke, no pretense. Just the steady glow of a woman who has stopped running from herself.

“What kind of woman am I?” I ask softly.
“The kind who refuses to forget who she is,” the fire answers.

I lean back, feeling my skin warm and my mind calmer. Maybe that’s what wisdom is — not knowing everything, but accepting that your fire burns exactly as it should.

And when the last spark fades, I smile.

“Goodnight,” I whisper to myself.
“Goodnight,” the fire answers”.