The ancient beats of African drums vibrate rhythmically in my heart and throughout my body; rivers and lakes course through my veins, leading me along paths my ancestors took as they migrated from one location to another. I hear their whispers in my sleep, praying to an unknown God to protect them and their descendants. The God of my ancestors, now unknown and unknowable.

I hear distant echoes of the stories they told around the evening fire, stories passed down from generation to generation. But the storytellers are all gone, and their tales with them. They lie silently in unmarked graves, in lands that I have never visited.

All I possess from my ancestors are memories carried in my DNA. And so I embark on an inward journey to uncover traces of them which linger within me: not visible traits like the texture of my hair, the shape of my eyes, the curve of my hips, and the timbre of my voice, but invisible markers from their experiences, which have shaped me into the woman I am today.