2024-04-13 19:49:33
Published by Vérone éditions (Evasion collection), “From mother to mother” takes the reader on a journey between two countries through the story of two pregnant women linked by the same desire to go in search of truth and freedom.
“Two women. Two pregnancies. Two countries. But the same desire to seek the truth, until little by little revealing the family drama that connects them… and frees them”, we read in the presentation of the book.
The novel features two women: Gunié, a 38-year-old Moroccan, who learns that she is pregnant with her fifth child and that her mother has run away again; and Fred, 40 years old, Franco-Dutch, in shock from an unwanted pregnancy which plunges her back into a painful past. Their stories, parallel at the start, intertwine and end up coming together via “a family drama”, confides Hind Berradi, in an interview with MAP.
The story takes place during the nine months of their joint pregnancy. This is certainly experienced in a completely different way, but, in the eyes of the author, “beyond all the differences, mothers are all going through the same thing deep down, which means that there is a certain complicity and complicity between these women connected by motherhood even if it is a unique experience, each lived in their own way.
In her novel, Gunié already has four children and she is very maternal at the time when Fred does not want to hear about children or motherhood. “These are two different approaches. But there is this common core of doubts, of questions that we ask ourselves around pregnancy,” she says. For the writer, giving birth to a child “remains something that connects all women and mothers”.
In her conception of the plot, she emphasizes that “the core of the novel is a family drama, but the women’s stories are just as important.”
“My goal is not to reveal this family drama, but to show how it is experienced, felt and told by women,” explains the novelist.
For his first novel, Hind Berradi drew his main source of inspiration from the exciting stories told by his grandmothers, Moroccan and French, about “our past, our origins, family evenings,..”
Generally speaking, this enthusiast of writing and psychology is interested in everything relating to the mother-child relationship or even separation, and everything relating to family secrets.
“From mother to mother” is thus intended to be “a tribute to my grandmothers and to women in general”, says the woman whose novel is also inspired by her dual Franco-Moroccan identity reflected in the origins of the two protagonists: two worlds, two cultures, two countries.
We also find the influence of her own experience as a young mother since the work was created during her parental leave.
“I would never have been able to write this story without being a mother. Without realizing it, we talk a lot about ourselves when we write. It was also a form of therapy for me. There are things that were more or less experienced less well during pregnancy or birth. It did me good to talk about it, even in a different, very indirect way,” she admits.
Convinced that there is no better person than a woman to tell the story of women, the author evokes doubts, anxieties, and sometimes even the fear of not being able to protect her child in a certain way… “so many questions who suddenly arrive when you become a mother, and who we don’t talk about enough.”
Compared to the difficulties encountered by the two women protagonists, “From Mother to Mother” appears to be a bearer of hope, like these “very persevering” heroines.
“Driven by the desire to discover the truth, they will not give up. They will learn, little by little, to really trust each other more and more, and to understand the underlying story of their stories,” she comments .
In this regard, the writer claims a double message. He encourages women to “trust each other” and for everything that concerns family secrets, recalls the importance of “freeing the floor”.
“Often we have the impression that we protect children by keeping secrets, but today, psychology admits that this does a lot of damage,” she notes.
And to conclude: “even if there are secrets that we don’t talk about, children feel it, and from generation to generation, these are things that are passed on unconsciously. It is important to trust in kindness to share, to speak, to free speech. This is how we can heal wounds, transcend obstacles and move forward in life.”
After a scientific course and her first years as a telecoms engineer, Hind Berradi left her permanent contract at 28 to become an entrepreneur and realize the many dreams on her bucket list! She becomes a yoga teacher, moves to an island, joins a theater troupe, resumes studies. Today, she is a life coach and instills her enthusiasm in her clients to help them also take the plunge, reconnect with their inner joy and power to live their dreams!
2024-04-13 19:49:33