THE ART OF BEING AN AUNT. By Diana Teotónio Pereira

The Art of being an Aunt. Why do I call it an Art? Because every real labor of love is for me an Art.

I am 40 years old and am not a Mother. Not by conviction but by chance.

I have 2 nieces, daughters to my older Sister and with a large age difference between them. One is a teenager the other is still a child.

The art of being an Aunt has its advantages and disadvantages, like everything in life, however for me the advantages supersedes the disadvantages. We are a little like a Mother without the responsibility, but we can give the same love, we can spoil without the consequences and we can be the shoulder to give support without being the adult that gives the example.

With a family that is very present like mine, essentially all female since my father's death, sometimes the limits of how much we can intercede in each other's personality gets blurred by the “Latinism” of each of us. The screams, cries, laughter and love make us one that sometimes feels as suffocating as it provokes an emptiness when it doesn't happen.

I have lived far from my nieces, one of them was born near me, the other on the other side of the world, but from the first day that I held them in my arms, I knew that I would always be connected to them and they would always influence my heart.

To be an Aunt is to love someone that is not ours but that in a way also belongs to us. It is to accompany their lives and stories from the outside but with the feeling of love of being on the inside.

I am an Aunt . And I love my nieces.

Tell us what do you thing about the art of being an Aunt!

Diana Teotónio Pereira