Born Unique: How DNA, Parents, and Place Shape Who I Become Before I Choose

I didn’t choose the day I arrived, the body I inhabit, or the two people whose genes made me possible. Before I learned to walk or speak, a foundation was already poured under my life. That base-my DNA, my parents, and the place and time I was born into-set a direction. It didn’t trap me. It did something quieter and more powerful: it made some paths easier to see and other paths harder to imagine.

When I say, “I’m unique,” I don’t just mean my opinions or my personality. I mean the starting conditions that I never voted on. My DNA is a one‑of‑one code. Even if I had an identical twin, the experience of the womb, the precise arrangement of cells, and tiny differences in early life would still separate us. Nature writes the first draft of each person in a custom way. No two drafts are the same, and that matters.

Inside the womb, things happen that shape who I will be. The environment my mother lived in, what she ate, the stress she carried, the air she breathed, and the timing of my development all mattered. My brain, senses, and body were forming in response to conditions I did not control. By the time I took my first breath, my nervous system had been tuned to a certain world. That early tuning taught my body how to react to light, sound, and touch. It was already telling my brain how to…