A personal reflection or reader-submitted story series about inherited beliefs and breaking generational patterns. Note: This based on a reader submission story not my own story. My mother, Neelam, was born in Fiji but raised by her strict Indian parents who believed in one thing: reputation above all. To her, confidence looked like perfection. A clean house. Perfect grades. A marriage before 25. A daughter who didn’t talk back. Neelam taught me how to survive, not how to shine. She meant well—every curfew, every critique, every reminder to “act like a lady” was her way of protecting me. But growing up in Auckland, in a Gen Z world, I started…