Daughters of daughters

The idea for Daughters of daughters came to me during Summer Lodge 10 at Nottingham Trent University last summer. During the last days of my mum's life I sat with her in the palliative care unit. I tried to soak up her presence, the form of her body under the hospital blanket, knowing our time together was coming to an end. She was on morphine, unconscious and not wanting to leave anything unsaid I thanked her out loud for birthing me, a difficult first delivery. During this time I understood Doreen was my vessel to earth, my spaceship. Our mothers are our spaceships. I thought of her mother, and her mother, and her mother... the daughters who birthed daughters who birthed daughters, reaching back to unremembered time. I am the end of this line, no daughter for me. In early summer I began to hand stitch eight organza dress forms, joining them at the navel with a 10cm circle of stitches, representing a fully dilated cervix. It's important that I name the seven women behind me. My mother's name was Doreen and her mother was Ada. Ancestry helped me name another three: Hannah, Mary and Ann. Ann was born in Norfolk in 1795 and the records go no further. In the future I hope to travel to Norfolk and trace the mother and grandmother of Ann.