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While Maya speaks of her mother fondly, she now refers to Jasmine as mom and to her uncle as dad.

“She was used to calling me Masi … and I didn’t want her to feel any different because my daughter was calling me mom,” says Bhambra, who has three other children. “I didn’t want any difference between the kids. If I was going to raise her as my daughter, I wanted her to think of me as her mom, and that is why I gave her the choice: If you feel ready and if you feel like you want to call me mom, just call me mom, and she did it on her own timing.”

Bhambra says her family is in a great place, something she couldn’t have envisioned a decade ago.

“Things are much better than where I thought they would be from where I was 10 years ago,” she says. “Sometimes when we think it’s the end of a story, it’s not. Whether it’s the end of a relationship, or when somebody passes away and we think it’s the end — it’s not the end. It’s the beginning of a whole new beautiful story.”

But it has taken Bhambra a long time to get to the point where she can share her experience.

“It took me six years to get to a place where I can finally do something like this interview without bawling my eyes out, which was a major goal for me. I want to share my story, share my sister’s story. I don’t ever want her story to be forgotten.”

Bhambra says she often has dreams of her sister, “usually when something really important is going on.”

She recalls the dream she had about Manjit on the night before she won custody of Maya. “I remember it vividly. We were all sitting around in a circle holding hands, with Maya in the middle, and Manjit just said to me, ‘It’s OK. She’s yours. We won.’”

See the full interview below: