Think about all the challenges humans have faced throughout evolution.

Starvation. Invasion. Injury. Infection. Attack. Accidents.

And yet, here we are.

We are here, you and I, because our mothers lived long enough to bring us into the world. And their mothers survived and their mothers before them.

We inherited the DNA of survivors.

Whatever your family suffered through, whether that’s slavery, war or the Holocaust, your bloodline was not snuffed out. The women who delivered you here endured.

When your mother was born, she carried in her infant body all the eggs she would ever produce. The egg that would one day become you formed inside her while she grew inside her mother.

I never met my mother’s mother. She had cancer while she was pregnant with my mom, and she died when my mother was an infant. But she carried my egg, inside my mom, and she brought us both to life.

On Mother’s Day, I give thanks to the survivor women who brought me here:

I’m grateful to the women of GirlTrek, who shared this powerful notion at the Women & Power Conference last summer. It has brought me great comfort during this pandemic to feel that I have genetics on my side, and that I can make it through because the women before me were survivors.

Happy Mother’s Day!