Cycles of Inheritance

I found myself lying in a nearly pitch-dark room, surrounded by shadows of conversations I wasn’t part of, conversations that seemed to move around me in a cycle I could neither claim nor escape. It was as if I had been placed in the middle of a story already in progress, a narrative as old as time and as familiar as the air I breathe. In that dim light, I overheard two women speaking—a woman, perhaps an employer, congratulated another woman, acknowledging her rise within the workplace. I murmured just enough to prove my relevance, hoping to claim my own place in the world they had carved out. Yet, I felt like an outsider, as if there was a barrier between me and that congratulatory moment, one that was both impenetrable and rooted in history, shaped by generations of the same cycle.

As I lay, I felt an urge, deep and instinctual, to get up and check on my daughters, a calling that felt like an inheritance passed down by countless women before me. When I walked outside, descending the stairs, I saw cats everywhere. Hungry, restless, they seemed desperate, filling the plastic bins that lined the space, kittens tangled and vulnerable, balancing one another in fragile attempts at comfort. Even the smallest among them clung to each other in a way that felt instinctual, a mirror of the bond that linked mother and child, despite the instability beneath them.

These kittens, with their wide eyes and trembling limbs, reminded me of the young mothers in my life, women who, like me, bore the weight of caring for another life while standing on shaky ground. These women have inherited cycles of survival, like the cats clinging to each other for warmth in dark, precarious places. A man appeared on the staircase, holding a tiny kitten in his hands, offering it to me. When I refused, he looked at me with an incredulity that was as ancient as the struggle itself, as though my desire to refuse another burden was defiance against a cycle he expected me to accept.

I wanted to escape, to push away this expectation, this unyielding masculine energy that seemed to frame my existence. Yet, as I moved forward, I felt the pressure of history, an inheritance that felt like it could never be severed. Each step forward was haunted by echoes of decisions not made by me, but by those who came before, young women and girls bound to partners who had left them, carrying children who would, in turn, carry the same weight. Masculine energy felt like an unbreakable shadow—one that hovered above us, linking us to the same fate, to patterns we were expected to obey without question.

Desperation gripped me as I hurried inside to find my mother, hoping for refuge from this relentless cycle. When I saw her holding my daughter, cradling her as if claiming her, my instincts flared. She spoke as though she intended to care for my children, to protect them in ways that perhaps she hadn’t been able to protect me. I held my daughter tightly, affirming that I could raise her, that I could break free from this legacy, though a part of me doubted whether any of us could ever truly escape.

In the dark, we prayed, an act that felt like clinging to hope itself, like asking for a force strong enough to sever these invisible chains. For a moment, there was peace—a fleeting moment where my mother and I shared unspoken truths, exchanging vulnerabilities that had remained buried for years. Yet, I knew that outside, the same shadows waited, a reminder of all the young women before me who had tried to break free, only to be pulled back into the same inescapable cycle.

I returned to the scene of the hungry, restless cats and saw one in labor, struggling and straining to bring forth new life. With each convulsion, she birthed kittens in strange, unnatural sacs, as though even new life itself was forced into an unnatural state. The kittens, dark and indistinct, scattered into the crevices of plastic bins, vanishing into a place that echoed the fragility of our existence. They seemed to disappear, as if they had never been, like the dreams of young women who hoped to change their futures, only to see those hopes dissolve in the shadows of expectation.

This dream, both visceral and haunting, speaks to the cycles young women and girls find themselves born into, the masculine energies that seem to shape our lives before we are even aware of them. It speaks to the legacy of motherhood bound not only by love and resilience but also by an inheritance of loss, the weight of partners who left, of fathers who were absent, and of daughters who carry the unspoken grief of their mothers. These cycles of expectation and responsibility, passed down through generations, tie us to the same fate, the same unyielding shadow that defines us before we can even define ourselves.

As young women, we carry these burdens into motherhood, trying to protect our daughters from the same cycles that shaped our lives. We fight to break free, to forge paths of our own, yet the shadows loom, reminding us that our mothers and grandmothers fought the same battle. This cycle is relentless, a chain that seems to stretch back through time and forward into the future, linking generation after generation in an inheritance of silent suffering and resilience. In our shared struggle, we are bound to one another, young mothers, daughters, and granddaughters, all caught in a web of expectations and love, of masculine energy and feminine strength, striving not only to survive but to finally break free.