Memory is encoded in our DNA. What your ancestors survived, what they endured, the resilience they built; it’s in you. Not as a burden. As a strength.
I saw something recently that made me stopped and peak my interest. A story about a ten-year-old Japanese researcher studying butterflies.
He wanted to understand if caterpillars and butterflies remember things. So he trained caterpillars to avoid lavender using a specific stimulus. Then he watched those same creatures after they transformed into butterflies. They still avoided the lavender. The memory carried over through the metamorphosis.
But here’s where it gets interesting: he tested their offsprings. Butterflies that were never trained, never exposed to the experiment. They still avoided the lavender.
The memory was passed down through generations without training.
Inherited memory
When people talk about generational trauma, about the lingering effects of slavery and oppression, I used to hear it differently. “That was the past. You should be over it.” As if trauma has an expiration date. As if the weight of what came before just… fades.
But that butterfly study changed how I think about it.
If a caterpillar’s learned fear can travel through a complete biological transformation and be passed to offspring that were never trained, what does that mean for human DNA? What does that mean for my DNA?
As a Black person in this world, there’s something embedded in me. It’s not just the stories I was told. It’s not just history in a textbook. It’s something deeper. It’s the memory of generations who had to survive. Who had to be strong when the world told them they couldn’t be. Who had to keep going when everything was set up for them to fail.
That resilience is in me. It’s encoded. And I’m only now understanding why.
What my mother taught me
My mother was one of the most selfless people I’ve ever known. And I didn’t understand it when I was young. I thought she was foolish.
People would knock on our gate every morning. A neighbour needed money to go overseas for work. Someone else needed help feeding their family. And my mother would help. Not because we had it to spare. We didn’t have much. But because she understood something.
She told me; “God has put me in a position to help. So I’m going to help.”
I used to get angry about it. I’d think; “We don’t have this. Why are you giving it away?” I thought she was making a mistake. I thought she was taking food from our table to give to people who might not even deserve it.
I was wrong.
Because of what she gave, I’ve been blessed. She planted seeds she would never see the harvest of. She gave what she didn’t have security in giving. And now I’m living in the overflow of that.
She’s not here to see it. But her generosity came back to me tenfold.
Breaking the cycle
That’s the thing about inherited resilience and inherited trauma. They work both ways.
My mother endured hardship. She knew loss. But instead of becoming bitter, instead of holding everything close, she gave more. She chose generosity when she could have chosen protection.
And that choice rippled forward. It shaped me. It shaped how I see the world. It shaped the way I’m learning to live.
I didn’t understand generational memory when I was younger. I thought each person started fresh. But we don’t. We carry something forward. The question is; are we carrying forward the trauma or the resilience? Are we carrying forward the fear or the strength?
My ancestors survived things I can’t even fathom. They were resilient in ways that modern life doesn’t ask us to be. And that’s in me. Not as a burden to overcome. But as a foundation I’m standing on.
The caterpillar doesn’t carry the fear as a curse. It carries it as preparation. And then it passes it forward.
Choosing what to pass on
I think about this with my own kids. What am I encoding in them? What lessons are they learning just by watching how I live?
They see me wake up at 5 am. They see me go to the gym. They see me show up. They see me struggle and keep going anyway. And they’re learning something at a cellular level about what’s possible. About what you do when things are hard.
But they also see me being present. They see me choosing them over the next promotion. They see me being generous when I don’t have to be. They see me helping people even when it costs something.
They’re not inheriting trauma. They’re inheriting resilience and choice.
And that matters. Because the DNA carries forward, but so does the choices we make. The values we live by. The way we treat people. The generosity we model.
I’m learning to be like my mother. Not because I’m naturally wired that way, but because I’m choosing to be. I’m choosing to give more than I think I should. I’m choosing to help when I could protect myself instead. I’m choosing to believe that what you give comes back.
And the weird part? It’s true. It actually works that way.
The bigger inheritance
When I was struggling; when I didn’t have a job coming in, when I wasn’t sure what was next; I never worried about money. Not because I had savings. But because I’d learned something from my mother. I’d learned that generosity works like a law.
If you give more than you think you should give, you get back more than you could have asked for. It sounds crazy. It sounds too simple. But I’ve lived it.
And I think that’s generational too. That’s the memory my mother encoded. That’s what her DNA taught me without words.
So now I’m teaching it to my kids. Not through lectures. Through how I live.
The butterfly transforms completely. Every cell is different. But the memory carries. The preparation carries. The lessons carry forward.
We’re more complicated than butterflies. We have choice. We can decide whether the inheritance we carry is one of fear or one of strength. One of scarcity or one of generosity. One of breaking or one of building.
My ancestors built something in me. My mother built something in me. And I’m building something in my kids.
That’s what’s in the DNA. Not just trauma or fear. But resilience. Choice. The knowledge that you can keep going even when it’s hard. That you can give even when you don’t have plenty. That what you sow comes back.
That’s the inheritance. And it’s powerful.
