‘While my grandmother threw away pictures to hide or forget the past, my foster mother documented my childhood.’


Nicole Johnson is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Washington Post, SELF, Redbook and elsewhere.
‘While my grandmother threw away pictures to hide or forget the past, my foster mother documented my childhood.’

Lee was a diorama-maker, criminal investigation educator and the first female police captain in the US.
![Frances Glessner Lee was a forensic science pioneer who made tiny murder dioramas to train crime scene investigators [Glessner House]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/FGL-creating-Nutshells-rotated.jpg?resize=270%2C180&quality=80)
‘It is a shrine to the people who helped raise me – a marriage of memories from my past and those I continue to create.’

For two non-biological sisters, tea time is the thread that keeps them tethered – across time, distance, and even death.

Navigating the world without my biological mother would not have been possible without the women who chose to raise me.

A partnership of 20 years, even a broken one, isn’t one you leave on a Thursday night without discussion.
![[Jawahir Al Naimi/Global News Insight]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/image002.png?resize=270%2C180&quality=80)
My birthday, along with so many other details of my life, had gotten caught up and swallowed by his addiction.
![[Illustration by Jawahir Al-Naimi/Global News Insight]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/1-3.jpg?resize=270%2C180&quality=80)
So different from the women she grew up with, my grandmother rocked a hot pink housecoat while pursuing her career.
![The writer's mother, Denise, in an apartment in California in 1963 [Photo courtesy of Nicole Johnson]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/FA000BE7-EA5E-4E18-A1BE-295A002DD9F7.jpg?resize=270%2C180&quality=80)
They looked at my ocean, lived my dream. My mother’s other daughter was the me that I wished I could be.
![[Jawahir Al Naimi/Global News Insight]](https://www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/LOS-ANGELES.jpg?resize=270%2C180&quality=80)
When a plant arrives after her mother’s death, a girl finds in it the parent who never had the chance to care for her.
