It Ends With Me
On realising I am the last link in my maternal line
I am a woman with no sisters and no daughters.
This means I am the end of my maternal line; an unbroken chain of mothers and daughters going back to the beginning of life on Earth.
I had actually never really considered this until a few days ago, when I saw a Tiktok about it, of all things. But now I can’t stop thinking about it.
Did you know Mitochondrial DNA is inherited exclusively through the maternal line? It is passed down from mothers to their children without contribution from the father. Mitochondrial DNA changes very little across generations, so it can be used to trace maternal lineage through hundreds of thousands of years.
Within my mitochondrial DNA I have traces of all the women who have come before me, but when I leave this earth, that history will die with me.
The first thing I felt when I made this realisation, was a familiar ache. I would have loved to have had a daughter. And though that particular wound is no longer as raw as it was during the depths of my struggle with secondary infertility, the scar will probably always twinge. The sight of tiny dresses in department stores used to be enough to completely unravel me. These days I don’t come undone, but every now and then something tugs at a loose thread.
More than that ache though, the realisation that I am the end of my maternal line fills me with gratitude and a sense of urgency to ensure I truly live my life well.
Generation after generation of women before me survived hardships I can’t even begin to imagine, in the hopes that their daughters, and their daughter’s daughters, might have a better life. I am the daughter at the end of that long chain, living the life my maternal ancestors dreamed of. I am safe, warm and comfortable. I have access to education and medical care. Every day I go to bed with a full belly.
More exceptional even still, is that I have choice. I have free will and personal advocacy. I can vote, own property and make decisions about my own life. How many women who came before me missed out on those privileges? What suffering did they endure so that I could be here and have these freedoms?
Earlier this year my mum moved house and while I was helping her pack, I uncovered a box of old photographs of relatives, some spanning right back to the Victorian era. I was mesmerised and spent a lovely morning sitting in the sunshine that poured through the window of our spare bedroom, just looking through the photos and trying to decipher the scrawled notes on the backs.
How did they spend their days? Did some of them have eyes the same shade of green as mine? What did they believe in?
Intellectually, I will never know these women, but my soul knows them. Their history is written in the DNA of my very cells.
I have a son and a brother with two sons of his own, so our family tree will continue beyond myself. But it feels important to honour this final chapter in a lineage of mothers and daughters spanning millennia (and even longer if you take into account the ancestral species that came before humans).
There is a heaviness to knowing I am the last chapter in this story of womanhood. I will likely never achieve anything grand enough to reflect the sacrifices so many made so that I could be here today, but I will do my best to live my life with love, gratitude and reverence for the miracle of being here.
So few of the women before me had the opportunity to pursue their passions and follow their hearts, perhaps the best way I can honor my matriarchs is just to keep chasing my silly, lofty, whimsical dreams.
To keep writing these words and telling my story.
Telling our story.
Katie xx
What a beautiful and thoughtful piece. I have always thought about this in the sense of our family's name, which is of course passed on by fathers alone. It is very humbling to think of all the mothers who came before, who fought and endured so that I can live this life. I also didn't know about the mitochondrial DNA, very interesting. Thank you 🙏
A lovely post which really struck a chord with me. I have thought about this a lot recently. My mum died last Christmas, she was an only child and I don't have children myself. There is a loneliness to this I hadn't anticipated. I have found myself scouring photographs of my grandmother and other female relatives in search of a connection.