Healing Your Ancestral Line — How the Fertility Patterns of Your Mothers May Be Living in Your Body

EMMA HAWES
2026-04-06T13:44:08+01:00

When we think about fertility challenges, we tend to look at the obvious places — hormones, age, lifestyle, medical history. But there is a layer of the fertility conversation that is rarely spoken about, and yet profoundly relevant for many women: the fertility patterns you carry may not have begun with you. They may have been handed down through your mother, your grandmother, the long line of women whose bodies, experiences and unresolved stories live on in your cells. This is not a spiritual concept divorced from science. It is increasingly supported by epigenetics — and it may be one of the most important pieces of your fertility puzzle.

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When we think about fertility challenges, we tend to look at the obvious places — hormones, age, lifestyle, medical history. And while these are all important, there is a layer of the fertility conversation that is rarely spoken about, and yet profoundly relevant for many women:

The fertility patterns you carry may not have begun with you.

They may have been handed down — through your mother, your grandmother, the long line of women whose bodies, experiences and unresolved stories live on in your cells.

This is not a spiritual concept divorced from science. It is increasingly supported by the emerging field of epigenetics — and it may be one of the most important pieces of your fertility puzzle.

What Is Epigenetics?

Epigenetics is the study of how gene expression is influenced by experience, environment and behaviour — without changing the underlying DNA sequence itself.

In simple terms: your genes are not your destiny. How they are expressed — which ones are switched on or off — is profoundly influenced by what you and your ancestors have experienced.

Research has shown that trauma, chronic stress, famine, grief and other significant experiences can leave what scientists call epigenetic marks — chemical tags on DNA that alter gene expression. And crucially, some of these marks can be passed down through generations.

One of the most cited studies in this field examined the descendants of Holocaust survivors and found measurable epigenetic differences in their stress hormone regulation compared to control groups — suggesting that the trauma of their parents and grandparents had left a biological imprint on their bodies.

You do not have to have experienced war or famine for this to be relevant to you. The everyday traumas of feminine life — pregnancy loss, difficult births, suppressed grief, relationships where safety was absent, generations of women whose bodies were not honoured — can all leave epigenetic traces that ripple forward through time.

What Might You Have Inherited?

When I work with women in my practice, I often invite them to look not just at their own story but at the stories of the women who came before them. What do you know about your mother's relationship with her body? Her fertility journey? Her experiences of pregnancy, birth or loss?

What about your grandmother? Her mother?

Common ancestral patterns that can affect fertility include:

A history of pregnancy loss — miscarriage, stillbirth or infant death in previous generations can create an unconscious cellular fear around carrying life

Difficult or traumatic births — birth trauma held in the maternal line can be passed forward as a nervous system pattern of bracing around pregnancy

Suppressed grief — emotions that were never allowed to be felt or expressed do not simply disappear. They are held in the body and can be passed on

Relationships where the feminine was not safe — generations of women who experienced domestic violence, coercive control or simply the quiet suppression of their needs and desires

Ambivalence around motherhood — complex feelings about becoming a mother, perhaps inherited from mothers who struggled with their own role

Beliefs about the body — inherited shame, disconnection or mistrust of the female body and its cycles

None of this is about blame — not of your ancestors, and certainly not of yourself. These women did the best they could with what they had. The patterns they carried were often survival adaptations in genuinely difficult circumstances.

But you have the opportunity to see them, name them, and choose differently.

The Science of Inherited Trauma

Beyond epigenetics, the work of researchers like Dr Bessel van der Kolk and Dr Peter Levine has illuminated how trauma is stored in the body — in the nervous system, the tissues, the implicit memory systems that operate below conscious awareness.

Dr Mark Wolynn, author of It Didn't Start With You, has done extensive work on how core trauma patterns are transmitted through families — often showing up in the lives of children and grandchildren as anxiety, physical symptoms, relationship patterns or — yes — fertility challenges.

His work suggests that some of our deepest fears and blocks are not originally ours. They are borrowed from the unresolved experiences of those who came before us.

The good news? What has been inherited can be healed. And when you heal it in yourself, you heal it for those who come after you too.

Past Lives and the Fertility Journey

For those open to exploring beyond the purely scientific, past life healing offers another layer of this work. In my own fertility journey, some of the most profound shifts came through past life regression — accessing and healing soul-level experiences of pregnancy loss, infant death and birth trauma that had no origin in my current lifetime but were being carried in my energy field nonetheless.

Whether you understand this literally or as a metaphor for deep subconscious patterning, the results can be remarkable. When these old stories are witnessed, felt and released, something in the body relaxes. A holding that has been present for a very long time finally lets go.

How to Begin Healing Your Ancestral Line

You do not need to know your full family history to begin this work. The body holds what the mind does not remember. Some powerful starting points:

Genogram work — mapping your family tree and noticing patterns of loss, trauma or difficulty across generations

Family constellation therapy — a powerful modality for bringing unconscious family system dynamics into awareness and resolution

Hypnotherapy and regression work — accessing the subconscious mind to identify and release inherited patterns

Womb healing — bringing loving, conscious attention to your womb space and the stories she holds — yours and those passed down to you

Letter writing — writing to your mother, grandmother or ancestors — not necessarily to send, but to express what has never been said

Ritual and ceremony — creating conscious moments of acknowledgement, gratitude and release for the women who came before you

Simply witnessing — sometimes the most powerful thing is to say aloud: "I see you. I honour you. I release what is yours to carry. I choose differently."

You Are Not Just Healing Yourself

This is perhaps the most beautiful and humbling truth of ancestral healing work:

When you do this work, you are not healing alone. You are healing backwards through time — bringing resolution to patterns that may have been carried for generations. And you are healing forward — ensuring that what you have inherited does not get passed on to the children who come after you, whether they are your own or the women you serve.

This is the work of the feminine at its most profound. It is not small. It is not navel-gazing. It is one of the most courageous and generous things a woman can do.

You came to heal this. And in healing it, you set them all free.

If this resonates and you feel called to go deeper into your own ancestral healing journey, I would love to support you.

🌿 Explore my book Fertility Isn't Linear — which includes chapters on subconscious healing, past life regression and ancestral patterns.

🌿 Download your free guide — 5 Holistic Practices That Supported My Natural Pregnancy at 41

🌿 To work with me one to one, visit my website.