September 29, 2023
Hello Fellow Dot Connectors,
Transgenerational trauma is the psychological and physiological effects of trauma passed from ancestors to their descendants.
Transgenerational healing is the best way I’ve found to honor our ancestors for all they endured so that we can flourish rather than just survive. When I recognize and begin to heal the trauma patterns in my lineage, I can grieve, rage, say truthful holy hell no’s and holy hell yes’s as well as find the courage to flourish, to become the writer and leader I’ve dreamed of my whole life.
Transgenerational healing may help you to release the unconscious origins of your self-defeating patterns that limit your life, limit your expression, and limit your creativity.
Here are some dots I’ve connected from my maternal grandmother through Mama to my own life.
Mama’s mom, Anna Arendt, was born in Prussia in 1902. At the end of WWI (1918), when she was 16, her 400-year-old country saw its end. The land was divided among other countries. Her homeland, East Prussia, experienced inflation, shortages, political instability, and social unrest under German rule. Through all of this, Mama was an egg in her ovary.
When Mama was 11, in 1939, WWII started, her father was shot in cold blood on his farm, and she was sent to run a post office at a nearby town because all the men had been conscripted into the army and because she was the best in math in her school. She lived in the post office during the week, cooking for herself and looking after herself. She was proud to be able to give her mother the money she earned to help provide for her younger siblings.
After WWII ended, when Mama was 16, her country suddenly no longer existed, half given to Poland and half to Russia. Her entire town fled to West Germany to avoid being sent to the Gulag in Siberia. I was an egg in her ovary through all of this.
When I was 11, in 1977, Mama volunteered to be a chaperone and interpreter for my sister’s volleyball team which had raised money to compete with various West German teams during a three-week tour of West Germany. Mama told me I would do all her chores while she was gone. Farm chores included milking two cows before school and after school, feeding all the calves, feeding the chickens, picking eggs, and cleaning the eggs for sale. I was to add all her farm chores to my own chores of feeding and bedding down the cattle. For the house chores, I was to make breakfast and dinner and pack lunches for everyone daily, do the laundry, tell my brother what groceries needed to be bought and keep the house in order. Inside me was a wordless feeling, you have to do this, you have to survive.
I did all her work as well as my own. None of the cows or calves got sick. But it was October and we were harvesting field corn late into the evening after chores, and I got a cold that turned into an incessant cough. When Mama returned and saw how sick I was, she scolded me for not taking care of myself. I was to do all the work and also not get sick because that threatened survival.
When she told me to do all her work, I didn’t question her or wonder why she didn’t divvy up the chores among the five of us at home, my three older brothers, Papa, and me. I did all her work as well as my own. In my body, agreeing to this felt necessary in order to survive, that saying “no” was a threat to the family’s survival. I didn’t start to question this until I was suffering exhaustion and burnout well into my adult years.
Refusing to do the daily work of life has always felt life-threatening–my physiology reacts with fight, flight and freeze. As a kid, I told myself that Mama and Papa would punish me if I didn’t do all the work they gave me. That self-talk was a freeze response.
After I moved away from home, the drive to survive had me putting my writing last, after all the mundane daily tasks of life–a flight response. Even now, I struggle with the feeling/belief that I have to finish all my chores first; expressing my creativity gets whatever bit of energy is left over.
This transgenerational trauma pattern also had me believing I had to take jobs like working in a cafeteria, baking bagels—jobs I didn’t want, but believed gave me safety because I worked at the source of food. None of this is logical and telling myself it’s not true doesn’t change my unconscious belief, my behavior, or the truth that my body feels. All of that lives in the subconscious.
When I became a teen, I began to worry that war would break out (yes, in early 1980’s U.S.) and that I would have to find a way to survive. I wrote poems about it through my teens and twenties and that helped me to process my feelings. The feelings were the most intense around age 16. Because I asked my friends and siblings if they had the same fears, I knew this wasn’t normal, but it felt true and it felt important to have a plan and to reassure myself that I would find a way to survive.
Because of these fears, I limited my choices (freeze), I let opportunities pass me by (flight), I avoided risks (fight), and I suppressed my creative process (freeze). Yes, I still led a productive life, but I also experienced exhaustion and burnout. I kept myself safe by not pursuing my dreams and by not letting myself dream big. These were real impacts of living in survival rather than healing and having the courage to flourish.
I’ve gone through many spirals of healing transgenerational trauma patterns. Impacts from trauma are not something you can talk yourself out of, and cognitive understanding alone doesn’t change it. Healing takes embodied practices, self-compassion, and willingness to feel.
Not knowing your family history isn’t necessary to heal transgenerational trauma patterns. I’ve become aware of patterns through intuition more often than knowing specific family history. Even when I’ve known of trauma that my ancestors experienced, it takes intuitive connections to see how those patterns are playing out in my daily experiences. This inner work is worth doing because of the energy that is freed and the creativity that becomes accessible.
Finding the courage to flourish is my way of honoring all that Oma and Mama endured and my way of belonging in this lineage of strong women.
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I’ll be offering a six-week workshop series starting Wednesday November 8 called, Sacred Writing: Creating a New Story for Humanity, aimed to enhance creative process through embodiment practices with a neuro-wise foundation. I’ll share more specific details in my next newsletter. Enrollment begins soon.
There will be some free taster classes in late October to see if the course is a fit.
Would you like to schedule a free one-hour embodied writing coaching session with me to talk about your creative process or discuss a creative project you are working on or considering? I’m here for it! Email me.
Connected we shine!
Rose
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