I feel close with my Grammy Velma, who died when I was 11. She comes up so often in therapy that I can objectively say she had an enormous impact on me. In the past two years, therapy and mental health challenges have revealed within me an even closer connection with my gram. In my saddest moments, when I take time and ask the sadness its origin, my gram’s image immediately appears in my mind’s eye. I know the sadness is her sadness; I know it in from my gut.

In one treasured family photo my gram stands the tallest at the head of a sibling lineup. The children stand in a field. It’s gloomy. My gram’s just 10-years-old and the oldest. She looks sad. Some of the others wear strong emotions and for good reason—that day was likely the last time they were all together before being split up and sent to live in different families. Just days earlier my gram found her mom, Ruth Anna Blair, dying or dead from trying to abort her 9th or 10th pregnancy by herself at home. Her death certificate states she used a bicycle pump. My great-grandmother was 27.

I often reflect on this sadness that lives in my body and I ponder its origin. Did it begin the day my Gram saw her dead mom’s body? Did it take root when her family was smashed, as she watched her siblings taken away? Did the sadness grow like wildfire in her motherless teen years and then simmer on a low boil for the rest of her life? I think about genes, DNA, and epigenetics. I contemplate “nature vs. nurture,” souls, and ancestral spirits. I consider all the theories we humans put forward to explain the knowing that some intangible part of ourselves is somehow older than we are. I think about the heart-wrenching my grandmothers experienced, about their anguish, and the impact of it on their bodies, their children, and the generations that came after them and will continue to come. I think about the lines of sadness I see run through certain relatives. I think about the alcoholism in my family and the feelings and memories it covers. I think about the ways it may have played out differently for all of us if my great-grandmother had had access to a safe, legal abortion. And if my gram was able to keep her mom.