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In psychoanalysis, there arises in the bond between mother and daugher the question of the feminine, what it is to be a woman. How does this question work itself out in the subjective construction of circumcised girls ? The issue appears to confront them with an unprecedented level of violence in the generational and group link, with a fatal outcome remaining a possibility. The article questions the belief that “women are born to suffer” as so widely purveyed in the context off excision, with the message being passed down from mother to daughter along with lullabies, riddles, tales and myths. The objective here is to adopt a clinical approach to analyse the excision’s “bearing-shame” effect and the conditions for its working out based on the story of two women and our experience in accompanying victims of fgm.