I am starting to see my family tree like a never-ending relay race, where one generation passes the baton to the next, picking up speed as each of us takes her turn to run in the world.

When I think of my grandma growing up on a farm in Oklahoma, married at the age of sixteen and having my mom at the age of eighteen, I am stunned by the ways in which my mom’s, mine, and my daughters’ young lives have differed.