Mom Donates Kidney to Daughter, Now They’re Graduating Nursing School Together

A mom donates a kidney to her daughter, and now they’re graduating nursing school together. Sometimes, a mama doesn’t just give birth to her baby—she keeps giving life long after the umbilical cord is cut. She becomes the cord herself. Becomes the lifeline. Becomes the one who kneels low, opens her hands wide, and says with no hesitation, “Take what you need to live.”

That’s the kind of woman Nija Butler is.

Ambrealle Always Dreamed of Being a Nurse

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Her daughter, Ambrealle Brown, had always dreamed of becoming a nurse. Healing was etched into her bones, stitched into her heart. But her body had other plans. When Focal Segmental Glomerulosclerosis (FSGS)—a rare and stubborn kidney disease—struck, it put everything on hold. Her hopes, her health, her future. And isn’t that the thing about dreams? Sometimes they feel buried before they ever bloom.

“I remember the moment my legs just wouldn’t move,” Ambrealle said. “I knew something was deeply wrong.”

And it was. That day marked the unraveling. Instead of graduation gowns and stethoscopes, she was hooked up to dialysis—up to 13 hours a day. Time turned into tubes and machines and long, aching nights. Life shrank to survival.

This Kind of Heartbreak Made Her Mother Move

But Nija—oh, this mama—was watching.

She’d watched her daughter wilt and wear a brave face. She heard the tremble in her voice during one of those late-night phone calls. “She wanted to give up,” Nija remembered. “She was tired of just being connected to a tube that her life revolved around.”

That kind of heartbreak? It makes a mother move.

She Got the Call For Her Kidney Donation

Doctors had already told Nija she probably wasn’t a match for kidney donation. But what does “probably” mean to a mama? She got tested anyway, quietly, without telling her daughter. “As parents, we always tell our children, we would die for you, and kids don’t always understand that kind of love,” Nija said, her voice steady. “I would have given anything for her to live. I mean that from the bottom of my heart, without a second thought.”

So when Ambrealle got the call, a new kidney was finally coming after five long years, she didn’t expect what she heard next.

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She Received Her Mama’s Kidney

“It’s me,” Nija told her. Just two words, simple and lifegiving. Like something out of the book of Ruth: “Where you go, I’ll go.”

In March 2023, the two underwent surgery, where Ambrealle received her mama’s kidney.

Life came back. Color flushed into her face again. Breath came easier. And the dream? It came out of hiding. Ambrealle went back to school. But she wasn’t alone. Her mama enrolled too.

They Went Through Nursing School Together

For 16 months, they were each other’s person. They passed notes, shared study guides, and leaned on each other through the chaos of clinicals and caffeine. In April 2025, the two of them, donning white caps and gowns, walked across the stage in Baton Rouge—hand in hand, heart in heart.

“I couldn’t have done it without her because nursing school is hard,” Ambrealle, now 34, said. “I’m happy that I was able to go through that milestone with her side by side.”

And side by side they remain. Ambrealle is stepping into the fire of the burn intensive care unit, ready to bring healing to those who feel like hope has burned to ash. Nija is using her hands and heart in a psychiatric facility, tending to souls the world often forgets.

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Life Comes Through Bravery

Together, they’re living proof that life doesn’t just come through biology—it comes through bravery, through love that bleeds and binds and breaks open to give.

It’s a story of second chances. Of slow miracles. Of a mother who said yes in every season.

Yes to birth.

Yes, to sacrifice.

Yes to sitting in the classroom beside the very girl she once rocked to sleep.

Love Like This Doesn’t Keep Score

If you listen close enough, you’ll hear it:

I’d do it all again.

Because love like this doesn’t keep score. It keeps giving.

And now, two nurses—once bound by blood, now bonded by grit and grace—walk into hospital rooms across Louisiana with more than credentials. They walk in carrying the weight of a story that says, “Don’t give up. Life comes again.”

Even when it’s hard. Even when it takes five years.

Even when it takes a mama saying, “Take my kidney—take my love—take all of me.”

And maybe that’s how we all really live again.

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John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”

WATCH: Mom Donates Kidney to Daughter, Now They’re Graduating Nursing School Together

LISTEN: From Teen Sweethearts to 80 Years of Marriage | Woman Saves Her Late Son’s Best Friend’s Mom With Donation

h/t: Oregon Live

Featured Image Credit:  YouTube/Good Morning America

Heather Riggleman is a believer, wife, mom, author, social media consultant, and full-time writer. She lives in Minden, Nebraska with her kids, high school sweetheart, and three cats who are her entourage around the homestead. She is a former award-winning journalist with over 2,000 articles published. She is full of grace and grit, raw honesty, and truly believes tacos can solve just about any situation. You can find her on GodUpdates, iBelieve, Crosswalk, Hello Darling, Focus On The Family, and in Brio Magazine. Connect with her at www.HeatherRiggleman.com or on Facebook.