Dear Daughter

Anita from Singapore is a mother whose first fostering experience didn’t go to plan, but she was encouraged to try again.

Twenty-three years on, she has opened her heart and home to 28 foster children.

She tells Namulanta Kombo about the difficult moments, and the joy and purpose she’s found in giving children a safe, loving place to grow.

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Bella is originally from the UK but now lives in Dubai, where she is raising her daughter who was born with global developmental delay. She tells Namulanta Kombo that her journey into parenthood has looked very different from what she once imagined, and she’s had to reshape her expectations around milestones, progress, and what ‘typical’ development means.

One of the most powerful moments she shares is the day her daughter took her ...

Did you ever look at your life and think you’d never end up here, raising children you once couldn’t imagine having?

Namulanta Kombo catches up with her old Kenyan school friend, Fiona. When they were teenagers, having children felt like something far off in the future. But life moves on, and now they both have sons who are the same age.

This episode is the first of a few Dear Son conversations within this series. It’s a gentle shif...

Tamaki talks about her daughter’s Seijin no Hi, Japan’s Coming of Age Day, the annual January celebration for young adults in the country who have turned 20 years old in the past year.

In a letter to her daughter, she looks back on the day and everything it brought with it: the excitement, the realisation that her daughter is stepping into adulthood, and the beautiful kimono that her daughter wore.

Tamaki tells Namulanta Kombo that e...

When 19-year-old Ann from Florida, USA was shot by her boyfriend in 2010, her family were thrust into a nightmare, one that meant taking the agonising decision to withdraw her life support.

In this intensely moving account of violence and loss, Ann’s mother, Kate, tells Namulanta that instead of pursuing the traditional court process, she chose something almost unheard of at the time - restorative justice. Sitting face to face with ...

Ajit, a dad from India, tells Namulanta about realising just how tough the world can be for his daughters as they grow up in a male dominated society.

He’s funny, honest and totally unfiltered as he talks about being on a huge learning curve as a ‘girl dad’, and admits that parenting is far harder than any management job he’s ever had.

And the conversation ends with a very emotional moment, as Ajit reveals how he discovered what trul...

Brenda, a Canadian mother living with chronic kidney disease, was facing a long and uncertain wait for a transplant, until 2013 when her daughter Kielah stepped forward with an extraordinary act of love.

Kielah volunteered to donate a kidney, but when tests revealed she wasn’t a match, she refused to give up. Instead, she entered Canada’s paired exchange programme, donating her kidney to a stranger so that Brenda could receive a com...

Namulanta Kombo is collecting letters of advice from around the world, to create a handbook for life for her daughter Koko – and daughters everywhere.

This season, Namulanta speaks to Brenda and Kielah from Canada, who tell her about the extraordinary and life-saving decision Kielah made for her mum.

Ajit from India reflects on the moment he realised just how challenging it is for his daughters to grow up in a male-dominated societ...

Shelley’s daughter leaves for college – it’s a thrilling moment for everyone, but at the same time there’s a sense of loss. What will happen to their family when one piece of it is missing?

So Shelley writes her daughter a letter with all the advice and memories she wants her to take as she heads off on her new adventure. She hides it in her daughter’s suitcase to find when she gets there.

And then she shares it with Dear Daughter! S...

Paola’s daughter Camilla was beautiful, with curly hair and big eyes like her mother. She loved bath time and eating mangoes. But she also had a severe mental and physical disability, and died aged 15 after nearly two years of palliative care.

Paola listened to Dear Daughter while she was in the hospital with Cami – and now she writes a letter of her own. She tells Namulanta about the joy her daughter brought into her life, and how ...

Annice Mukherjee is a hormone expert – she’s spent her career helping women deal with menopause. But when she develops breast cancer at 41, she becomes a patient rather than a doctor.

Annice writes a letter to her daughter about how her professional experience helped her deal with her personal health challenge, and about how her daughter can take control of her own hormone health.

She tells Namulanta that there’s more conversation ar...

Azola’s friends welcomed him to fatherhood with a surprise baby shower, called a nappy braai. Instead of the chilled Saturday barbecue he was expecting, they handed him a beer and an adult nappy and told him to suit up.

Azola thinks it’s important to mark milestones. When he was born in South Africa in 1990, the country was just emerging from apartheid. Families didn’t talk openly about their hopes and dreams because life was so unc...

Listener Julia writes a letter to her future daughter with some advice from her own life: if a man ever hits you, walk away the first time. When her ex-boyfriend slapped her in the face, he said he was sorry and he would never do it again. But then things started getting worse. She tells Namulanta how she finally got out of her abusive relationship and rebuilt her life – and what she wants other people in similar situations to ...

Malaka’s written her first book – it’s a romance novel with a lot of sex scenes. How will her family react?

Malaka Grant published her first romance novel in 2013 – she’d been writing about sex and romance under a pseudonym for years, but she’d decided to come out of the shadows. She writes a letter to her daughters about what happened when her father in law brought her book out at Christmas brunch.

Malaka runs a blog and podcast ca...

Firyal and her daughter were asleep when the Yemeni civil war reached their town in 2014. They woke up to the sound of bombs overhead – Firyal was terrified, but her daughter was looking at her for reassurance. What should she say?

Together, they fled their home. It was the start of a long journey, moving from place to place in search of safety and new opportunities. And Firyal is a single parent – the responsibility is all on her s...

Every year Norwegian high school graduates paint the town red for “russefeiring”. It’s a month long period of intense partying to celebrate the end of high school – students buy party buses, wear matching overalls and dare each other to stay up all night or kiss a policeman. And it all happens right before they take their exams… Anja’s daughter went through russ last year. Anja didn’t sleep much during that month, because she was...

When Vandana’s marriage ended in divorce, she felt stigmatised and outcast. After a long and turbulent legal process, she ended up retraining as a divorce lawyer and setting up a group for others who felt unable to talk about the breakdown of their marriages.

In the process, she found out what was really happening inside the marriages of many Indian women. She’s since remarried and has twin sons but she wants to tell the daughters o...

Rahab went to prison when her children were little. She’d been taking part in carjackings and armed robberies. Once she got caught, she spent six years at Langata women’s prison in Nairobi, Kenya.

While she was in prison, she managed to turn her life around – but how can she rebuild her relationship with her three children, and make up for the time she missed?

Namulanta visits Langata to meet Rahab and finds out what life is like fo...

When Mahynour’s daughter gets her first bra, it’s Mahynour who is the most excited – her little girl is a young lady now. But it also brings Mahynour’s memories of her own teenage years flooding back. She remembers not wanting to wear a bra – she felt ashamed of the changes in her body, and she didn’t know who to talk to. How can she make sure her daughter has a better experience? Luckily, her female relatives are on hand to he...