This week I'm doing something a little different. Just me sharing what's been on my heart after celebrating my mom's 80th birthday.

My husband spent four nights making 200 handmade pierogi from scratch to surprise her. I put together a slideshow of almost every photo that exists of her life, black and white photos of a little girl in postwar Warsaw, all the way through to the woman she is today, who still swims in the ocean every chance she gets and has more trips planned than I do.

And going through all of those photos, I just kept thinking about what it actually took for her to build this life.

My parents were born into a Poland that was still being rebuilt after World War II, where the Soviets came in as soon as the Nazis left, where my grandparents had a business the Communist party seized, took the profits, left them the debts. Where waiting ten years for your own apartment was just normal. Where people stood in ration lines for bread that wasn't there.

And somehow, in the middle of all of that, my mom had this quiet knowing that she would one day live in the United States. Even while communist propaganda was telling her how horrible it was. She just knew.

This episode is about her. But honestly, it ended up being about legacy: what our parents and ancestors carried so we could have the lives we have today.

IN THIS EPISODE:

The moment Karolina's mom decided they weren't going back to Poland and how that decision changed our entire lives
How my parents defected from Poland during Poland's martial law: where the government was at war with its own citizens.
What the first years in the United States actually looked like: trying to find work, not speaking the language and the recessions that almost took them out
The slide show that went through 80 years of my mom's life set to Polish classical music and what it felt like to watch it with her
Why I think my mom is the visionary of our family, and what I've inherited from that

If you've ever thought about the shoulders you're standing on — this one is for you.

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