Past-Forward: A Three-Decade and Three-Thousand Mile Journey Home....

I am a DNA dead-end. The journey of a genetic signature that originated tens of thousands of years ago and wound its way through the ages, the eras, the centuries and generations of my maternal ancestors to fuse into my being at the moment of my own conception ends with me.

Maternal DNA, called mitochondrial DNA or MtDNA, is passed by mothers to all their children, male or female, but only daughters can pass it on to the next generation. That means that the MtDNA passed on by mother to daug...