Dear Daughter

Emma, who is from Denmark, grew up with openness about her donor conception from the very start. When she was a baby, her parents wrote her a letter explaining how she came into the world, putting it inside a children’s...

How far would you go to help your child achieve their dreams? Corne drove the family tractor across South Africa to raise money so her daughter, Marconette, could represent her country at the World Tug of War...

Lejla was born as a result of sexual violence during the Bosnian war. Adopted as a baby, she grew up in the UK. In this episode, she shares her difficult origin story with Namulanta Kombo. It’s a powerful journey marked...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...