Today is my maternal grandmother’s birthday. I am amazed by the science that says I was somehow, once, in her body, because a woman’s ovaries when she is a fetus actually also contain the future eggs of their daughters. (WHAT? HOW???)
Did you know that your Grandmother carried part of you inside her womb? But How? Well… a female fetus is born with all the eggs she will ever have in her lifetime. So when your Grandmother was carrying your mother in her Womb, you were a tiny egg in your Mother’s ovaries.
Honestly, I can’t even wrap my head around this… so I just accept the mystery of it.
(Check out this article for a fairly accessible explanation: the gist of which is, the egg that became you grew inside your mother while she was still growing inside your grandmother, like Russian nesting dolls.)
And it made me want to share this poem, from Samantha Reynolds, who injects little moments of beauty and reflection, into my insta-feed.
I also think that knowing where you come from, and who you come from, helps ground us into something bigger, and can help us interact in a better way with everyone around us. We know that we are just the living link in long long chains, and we can sink into the idea that we were dreamed here, that this story we’re living now seeded a long time ago.
Even if there has been trouble and strife in your line, if you do the math, you are the result of the love of thousands, as Linda Hogan beautifully says.
So what seeds will you drop into this ground beneath us, that might grow into 2122? Into the world to be inherited?
via @bentlily:
I remain as awed as ever by the magic trick of ancestry.
This rope of choices, luck, eye colour. It’s such a strange and wondrous thing to land in this life at the end of all that destiny, and then even more profound to let the rope down further and make children of my own.
This poem’s for you, Granny. ❤️
YOUR EYES
Old photograph,
quiet face.
They say I have
your eyes.
How can it be
that you lived
and then you
didn’t.
Did you leave
your eyes behind
for me
to wear
so you could
see
how it all
turned out?
~ Samantha Reynolds
The Wellness Almanac 