What’s in your DNA? And what isn’t?
DNA is a script, but not the whole story. Epigenetics reminds us that life leaves annotations on the script — chemical tags called methyl groups that attach to the DNA, turning certain genes up or down, on or off. A famine, a war, a long season of stress: each can leave a methylated mark, a reminder etched into the body that may echo for generations.
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Which means we carry more than eye colour, height, predisposition to illness. We carry silence, vigilance, survival strategies. The cortisol-stained memory of a war long over, the hunger of someone fleeing a country, the traumas of one generation can leave chemical marks on the next.
When I came back to my family home, it felt like walking into the double helix itself. The wallpaper that held my childhood, the stairs I once charged up and down, the kitchen where I sat all those years before. DNA is one kind of inheritance; a house is another. Both are maps, both annotated, in sorts.
But epigenetics is not destiny. The marks left by trauma can also be softened by care, by safety, by homecoming. What’s passed down is not only damage but also resilience — a stubborn refusal to vanish.
So I ask: what does your body carry that is not strictly “yours”? What has been written into you by history, by family, by the wider world which you have no power over? And what new annotations are you making now?
