*One Human Fabric | Maya Tevet Dayan | 6 Minutes on Friday | August 22, 2025*
This week I came across something I’d never heard of before: did you know that during pregnancy, fetal cells cross the placenta and enter the mother’s bloodstream - and sometimes remain there for decades? That means part of the fetus continues to live inside the mother for the rest of her life. And if she has more than one child, parts of all those children may live on in her body long after they've left the nest.
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Why did this strike me so deeply? First, because it’s yet another explanation for the unbreakable bond between mothers and children, even when their emotional relationship is complicated. But moreover, scientists have discovered that these fetal cells can behave like stem cells. They settle in different tissues - liver, heart, brain, even bone - and if an organ is injured, they can help repair it. This idea floored me:
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Parts of your child remain within you long after birth. And sometimes, those very parts help heal the one who gave them life - reaching back to repair the past.
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When I was writing “Feminism As I Taught It to My Daughters”, I mentioned my mother’s relationship with her beauty, and the sorrow passed down through generations around menstruation in my family, and I described the complicated relationship the women in my family had with money - a relationship that mirrors that of so many women. Again and again, I longed to heal them retroactively, with what we know and do now. If only that were possible.
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And suddenly, science says- it is. We already do it. As fetuses. We heal our mothers in reverse.
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This thought grabbed me especially hard this week, in the midst of a time when everything feels fragmented and harsh and full of exclamation marks, in a world where people shout their truths with certainty, frighten each other, divide into camps, and where everything can feel overwhelming and lonely. How comforting to remember that beneath all the slogans, we are connected in ways like these - like cells migrating between generations, forward and back - stronger than anything happening on the surface.
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So I made a list. A list that is my antidote to the confusion and isolation of these days. A list of all the ways we are connected to one another, including people who are complete strangers. A list to look at and remember.
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I started with the obvious ones: for example, anyone who donates or receives blood shares cells and stem cells. Of course, anyone who undergoes an organ transplant forms a deep, unbreakable connection. Every nursing baby receives immune cells and stem cells through milk. A mosquito in Nazareth can bite someone in Tel Aviv and transfer blood from blood. There's spillover of living particles between twins, between siblings. The body absorbs cellular memory from others - sometimes for years, sometimes for life. And of course, we all inhale and exhale the same air. Dust particles, pollen, pollution, even viruses, move among us indiscriminately. One person’s exhale becomes another’s inhale. On hot days, at a protest or in a traffic jam, we’re literally breathing each other in.
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We know this already. But I continued my list with the things we tend to forget. That we constantly share bacteria, fungi, and viruses with everyone around us. Not just our partners, kids, friends, or pets.
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Entire communities share and pass along microbes and fungal colonies. To the point where scientists can identify a microbial fingerprint among people who live on the same street, in the same building, in the same classroom, or who work in the same office. We are all connected!
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I looked at that list and something in me softened. No matter how separate we may feel from others, our bodies are never isolated islands. Quite the opposite - other people’s microbes are constantly becoming part of us, a major part of our digestive, respiratory, and nervous systems. And we are constantly becoming part of them. No matter how much we try to convince ourselves they are “others,” with awful opinions, and that we’ll never be united.
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This includes annoying neighbors, or coworkers who vote for the party you loathe, or fellow students, people you pass in the supermarket, or those nearby who seem threatening or strange. All of them, all the time, are exchanging materials with you and influencing your bodily and emotional states. And when people say that Israelis are especially cheerful and optimistic, I’m sure it has something to do with this microbial fingerprint we all share here with one another.
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In short, no matter the slogan or the flag, our bodies are made of the same materials: fruits and bread eaten in different cities are nourished by the same rainfall, the same soil, the same bees. The molecules in our breath travel from our lungs to others’. The microbes do too. Even when we insist on seeing ourselves as separate, we already live as one shared tissue.
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In other words, no matter how hard we try to split apart, biology and ecology insist on weaving us into one shared body.
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This week I asked my writing community, how are you? And the responses poured in, repeating the same few words: overwhelmed, confused, afraid, lost. I understood them. I am a part of the human fabric of this time and place. I too feel overwhelmed and confused and afraid. Then we wrote. On Zoom, we may not share microbes, air, blood, or traveling cells. We may seem like windows without bodies. But still, something happens, something I can only describe as emotional contagion.
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Our mood shifted. Emotions, words, tone of voice. I have no idea how it works. Maybe it’s a synchronicity of brain waves? Whatever it is, after half an hour, a great tenderness fell over us. That tenderness replaced the heaviness. Even after I closed the Zoom, I felt it. It stayed with me all day. And now, writing about it, I feel it again.
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The best remedy I know for times like these is togetherness. To remember how wise biology is, how smart the microbes are, the emotional frequencies, the whole world trying to connect us, to glue us to one another, despite it all. Sometimes, like this week, I remember. I write it down. I surrender to that natural force that interrupts loneliness and makes us one.
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If you’d like to join us for shared (Hebrew) writing in the holiday season, to enter fall and the new year with inspiration, I’m adding a link here. Registration for the September–October group is now open. The price is very modest, but if it’s out of reach for you right now, just write to me. No need to hesitate, I’ll be happy to include you at no cost. The strength of this community is in its ability to include and connect us all.
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Wishing you Shabbat Shalom, may we remember the oneness that we are.
*Maya Tevet Dayan*