Now we know that female DNA is carried from the generation before, and the generations before that, it's fair to say that women and their ancestors are indisputably connected via their DNA. This carries an extraordinary weight and meaning for what female connection is about, and how we can then unconsciously adopt and carry ancestral patterns and, in the same breath, more consciously work to change any maladaptive patterns that have been carried over.
When we talk about our children having genetic similarities in physical conditions such as health tendencies or facial appearances, it also exists in behaviours and in our patterns or conditioning, in how we carry, adapt to, or resist those behaviours.
In matriarchal times, property was passed down through the female line, yet a long time afterwards that entitlement was halted by the invading patriarchal Indo-European cultures, which then became the prevailing ones and institutionalised as the normal way of things in terms of property and wealth distribution and retention.
When we think of birth trauma, we could include genetic conditioning and likely patterns of subjugation and repression, or more simply, not being seen and heard, although with much greater weight and oppression attached to it. It is then no small wonder that women carry the load of emotional trauma and have been forced to accept it as part of their dutiful burden as women. Certainly, if you are told something consistently over time, you get to believe it after a while. Women became lesser than men and were expected to be subservient to them, and treated as property in various cultures, which in some cultures, continues to exist even today.
This fresh understanding of concepts like the body keeps the score, eloquently explained by its author, Bessel van der Kolk, shows us how trauma stays persistently and consistently in the tissues of the body, unless persistent and appropriate approaches to undo and change such trauma are applied. Otherwise, it is passed on.
Along with those threads that run between mothers and daughters are kinder, softer things of memories held in the body, and in the deeper micro-lineage of being female and carrying the weight of generations, for good and bad. Think of these as inheritances that need to be taken out, aired and looked at anew, to see if they still stand the relevancy of view, or whether they need to be discarded or tweaked if still of use.
Women carry the legacies of what it was to be female for their previous ancestral line: an indrawn breath at the mention of the body, a wariness around fertility, a belief that pain is simply what women endure. We rarely choose these inheritances. We absorb them, long before we have the words to question them.
I think of a woman I worked with recently, in the Fertile Path stage of her life, who came to me convinced her body was "against her." As we talked, it became clear the belief wasn't hers alone. She had brought in her mother's anguish in losing two early pregnancies before she was born, and being forced to keep quiet about it, so as not to expose what and how it had happened and to not shame or blame her husband, who had freely admitted he had not wanted children.
She brought in her maternal grandmother's years of continual pregnancies, and the losses in between, meant she never had sufficient time to grieve them, or her own sense of self as a grieving woman. Three generations of women who "sucked up" their disappointment, as those times dictated, but nonetheless, those losses left indelible stains upon each woman's heart, and the ache of having to accept it without much overt help or time to absorb the losses. The simple fate of "that's how it is" for the women in their family. A fated expectation passed down hand to hand, and mostly unexamined.
This is how ancestral patterns work. They are hidden away. Yet they often show up in small, repeated phrases like don't make a fuss, just be strong, this is just what happens to us, you've got this (a more recent incantation, suggesting that if you haven't, life is going to drop you in it), all of it said with love and kindness, but quietly meant to keep the person acquiescent in their grief, rather than questioning the status quo of why they have to accept it at all.
A daughter keenly watches her mother's relationship with her own body, her own cycles, her own worth, and notes when things are rocky. Patterns of worth are well ingrained by the time she is grown, and she starts to live out those same patterns in her daily life.
These invisible threads are not necessarily a burden, though they can seem a yoke at times, pulling a woman back into line, or opening her to deeper intuitive aspects of resilience, humour, fierce love, determination, persistence and self-worth. Part of knowing your ancestral threads, and how you share that with your own mother, is heartfelt and tender work, as in holding the thread up to the light, sorting out what is helpful and constructive, and letting go of the threads that are neither.
So how do you begin to see your own thread clearly?
Start by noticing your body's reflexive language. When you think about your cycle, your fertility, or your health, what phrases surface automatically? Whose voice do they belong to?
Trace it back one generation, gently. Ask your mother, or simply reflect, on what she was taught about her own body. You may find the belief didn't begin with her either.
It's worth noticing where these patterns show up physically in the body as much as in the mind. In my work, this is often where energy medicine and bodywork come together: beliefs that become hardwired settle into tissue too. The lower back can hold a lack of support, or not knowing how to ask for it. The pelvis can hold how safely you stand in your body, even during menstruation, which is a vulnerable time. The abdomen often carries the discomfort and fear young girls feel as they get used to their first periods, and the shoulders can round forward from hiding the changes of a girl's body, wary of curious glances.
Choose one to examine. Ask where it came from, what it once protected you from, and what might shift if you let it go. This kind of disentangling is surprisingly freeing as you see the belief for what it is, thank it for how it has served your line at the time, and recognise it no longer needs a home in you. That's enough to change what travels forward to the next generation.
Breaking a pattern doesn't mean rejecting where you came from, or criticising your mother or grandmother for having carried it in the first place. It means becoming a more deliberate link in the chain and choosing, with open eyes, what you pass on. This is no small thing. In fact, it may be one of the most powerful acts of mothering there is, whether or not you have a daughter of your own to hand it forward to or an ongoing act of self-love in releasing your own threads that have become redundant.
If this resonates with you, and you would like support in this extraordinary work of tracing or releasing your own inherited patterns, I would love to help you explore this in a session.