to all the baby's mamas, mamas

…mamas, mamas, baby mamas, mamas

Outkast—title from their song ‘Ms.Jackson’

I was born exactly on my due date, April 15th, 2001. It was Easter Sunday—the first and maybe the last time I’d be perfectly on time for anything. On top of it being the day Jesus rose from the dead, somehow, my mother also double-booked my sister's baptism and my brother's first communion. I can picture the words 'baby due?' scribbled somewhere near the bottom of her calendar box that day, with little expectation that I would arrive exactly on the scheduled date—considering fewer than 5% of babies do. Guests were set to visit the house for the Easter-baptism-communion combo party a few hours after Mass, but it didn't take long into the service for my mother to realize she was going into labor. Suddenly, dinner was the last thing on her mind. Now, instead, a fourth item on the day’s already busy roster: childbirth.

I can’t begin to imagine the sheer confusion and fear that must come with being born. Without any context, you are suddenly somewhere you were not before—and of all places, it's a sterile white hospital room filled with people in matching outfits. Everything is blurry, faint smells of sanitizer flood your nostrils, and vague, unintelligible mumbling surrounds you—mostly covered up by your very own wailing. What is that noise, and why is it coming out of me? It's probably a blessing that we lack these first memories of existence and the knowledge to even begin to describe what it felt like. Surrealist artist Salvador Dali claimed he did recall these first early memories. He has based several paintings on these pre-birth memories in the womb. In his autobiography, he describes his time in his mother's womb as being “divine, [it was] paradise.” Dali goes on to explain his theory that the process of birth expels us from this paradise and leaves us traumatized by the abrupt and violent introduction “to all the hard dangers of the frighteningly real new world.” We try to overcome this trauma in Dali's eyes by using our imaginations to channel our innate connection to the peaceful bliss we once experienced, but otherwise, the anguish of it remains etched into our minds.

Eggs on the Plate without the Plate, Salvador Dali (1932)

The majority of us who do not recall these early memories experience what researchers call infantile amnesia. Infants are capable of forming memories in their first few months, though it starts off very limited and gradually expands. Scientists assume that the reason most people don't have memories before the age of 2 could be attributed to a lack of a sense of self, an inability to use language for forming narratives, and the absence of a fully developed hippocampus—the part of the brain responsible for memory.

These parts of our lives, though mostly foggy or completely unavailable to us, are still so important. The events of our lives and the quality of our environment from 0-4 are fundamental to our being. These moments shape the way our sense of self develops, how our personalities manifest, and while I do believe much of who we are is innate, our physical environment is equally at play. But where is the line between nature and nurture? While Dali supposed much of our initial trauma and pain in life is triggered at birth, epigenetics offers an explanation that suggests the influence of countless preceding ancestors shapes our nature. In other words, who we ultimately become is not solely determined in the womb but is impacted by the nurturing experiences of the maternal line that precedes us.

All the eggs a woman will ever carry form in her ovaries while she is a four-month-old fetus in the womb of her mother. This means our cellular life really begins in the womb of our grandmother. It's amazing to think that while my mother was a baby in her mother’s womb, I was there too—or the beginnings of what would become me. My 22 years on Earth are hardly the full picture. The ways my maternal ancestors lived, the foods they ate, the stressors in their lives, every good and bad experience was actively altering the genetic code that would one day become my mother, then me, and someday my own daughters. We all carry these generational dispositions and traumas in us, for better or for worse.

Since learning about this, I've been thinking a lot about my future daughter, if I have one. I think about the space we shared together in my mother’s womb, neither of us conscious, but both of us affected. I think about my life now, the generational traumas I carry, and I wonder if it's not too late for me to break them for her and hers, or if it's already been written in her code. When I choose to neglect my own healing, I leave a mark on all the generations that might follow me. I think we all have a responsibility to heal ourselves, yes, to feel better and live better now, but more so in hopes of improving the lives of our descendants, and even further the people whom they will encounter and the world they will live in. The chain reaction of our actions never really ends. It's not possible to start from scratch (unfortunately), but from where I stand now, I have hope that much can be undone and reworked. But just in case, in advance, I'm sorry for the anxiety, the depression, for my horrible sweet tooth, for all the days I skip the gym to rot in bed and aimlessly scroll, for the late nights, for my 9-5, for the skipped meals, for the mornings I wake up and forget to pray, and anything else.

We still have work to do.