When my brother died in his early 50s from the accumulated illness brought on by a lifetime of substance abuse I said to my mom, "Have you noticed, Mom, that your father died of liver cirrhosis in his early 50s and now your son has died of liver cirrhosis in his early 50s?" My mom, it should be noted, doesn't drink at all. She dealt with her experience of growing up with an alcoholic father by becoming a teetotaller. But that was the sum total of the steps she took to unpack that experience or heal from it. The other thing that's worth noting is that my brother was adopted. He didn't even share genetic material with my mom. That's how strong generational patterns of trauma are; he didn't have to.
I was clear with my mom that I wasn't blaming her for my brother's death. He also made choices at every step. What I was hoping she would come to a deeper understanding about is all the work that I have done to interrupt those patterns of generational trauma and heal them (to the extent that any one person can). This has involved choices and boundaries that my mom has rarely understood and sometimes actively resisted. It's not easy to be the pattern-interrupter but I wouldn't trade it. I'm very proud of the people my children are becoming as a result, even when they enforce boundaries on me which are uncomfortable. It's in those moments of discomfort, my ability to sit in it and our ability to work through it openly together, that all of my work feels validated.
You're welcome. Thank YOU, somewhat off-topic, for The Wise Unknown podcast. It is SO GOOD on so many levels-- the premise, the guests, the way that you are worrying notions of ambition and achievement and wisdom. I just really, really love it.
My goodness this is really profound and eerily prescient and curiously relevant to the journey my wife and I have been traveling with our just turned 5 year old. Thank you for continuing to share such helpful words that resonate with so many of us long after the clicks of your keyboard have faded.
I have been thinking about this very truth since learning so much more about the history of Korea - something so many new Korean authors are making accessible to descendants of Korea, like me, who are completely removed (military/adoption, etc). The trauma of oppression, war, famine and all the things - which I knew of but never really understood - is not as distant as I once thought. Healing has only just begun in Korea - it’s all so close! I’m compelled to learn everything of my Korean ancestors’ stories so I might better learn about my self. Thank you for sharing your insights.
Beautiful, Courtney. An acquaintance wrote a book titled, “Stalking Irish Madness.” He rented a trailer and did interviews and research in Ireland to probe the roots of his family’s generations of schizophrenia. Turns out there is a significant link between famine and- think, the Irish potato famine 150 years ago - and schizophrenia. The body indeed keeps the score.
I can’t get my mind off the traumas that are being caused by the bombing of innocent children in Gaza. When can people possibly recover from the terrible violence being inflicted by those responsible for this war? DD
Thank you for this, Courtney. I so appreciate how this family story--as you so gently tell it--radiates out to community, national, and international levels. Beautiful photos too.
I have loved ones, young, with severe illnesses and disabilities that had not appeared in the family's visible genetic history. It is useful in these cases too to realize that some cards are simply dealt, and to rise to these novel appearances with love and the best one can summon.
It is surely of great value to realize the things that do run in families- things like tendency to mood disorders or alcoholism or breast cancer and so forth- so one can be prepared for what could arise in younger generations, recognizing the first appearances of things.
I always love your appreciation of your own parents. I am Omama to my grandson. Or more accurately Ahhhh!
Thank you so much Courtney, I always appreciate your writing. You represent to me a bridge between the cultural heartland and the fringe (the space I tend to play in more).
Emotional inheritance, and the general lack of awareness in family systems, is one of the great social troubles of our times (along with more general ancestral disconnection). My experience has shown that healing, in similar defiance of the "pulled up by our own bootstraps" dictum, is a group and familial project, and that when an individual heals, it's actually healing in a family system. This is the basis of family constellation work, and also behind the premise of any most modern therapy - healing is relational.
Thus, along with our own reflection on our emotional inheritance, I feel this is an important, albeit often wildly difficult, reflection to share within the family. Said another way, for us to fully be responsible to our emotional inheritance, it means talking with our parents (and even our children, one day), about our childhoods, their childhoods, and how these legacies of trauma and resilience get passed down.
When my mother died, it was a huge shift in my nuclear family system. She was the dramatic force in the family, and her death left a gaping crater in the constellation between my father, sister and I. A couple of years later, and I gently asked for, and eventually organized, counseling between us three, first happening in dyads (sister-father, sister-brother, brother-father), and later us three together.
In my all years on the "healing path," this was the most impactful journey I have taken. Integration (the grail of healing work), necessitates being reflected in our healing by those around us, which due to the obligation of kinship, also requires those others to shift and evolve.
Is emotional inheritance something you have discussed with your family? Your papa and mama? I'd be curious to hear your share if you have, and how that continued work unfolds.
This is an amazing piece. I am a therapist and educator specializing in the treatment of eating disorders for 30 years. I am currently working on curriculum for my new course and have been researching so much. The course is entitled, Intergenerational Food/Eating Trauma and explores what you are discussing but in the context of trauma events that have yielded significant food eating issues such as the Holocaust , Spanish American war, living with food insecurity and poverty and many more. Thank you for sharing Dr. Yehuda’s quote. It’s profound and powerful. There is not much literature on the topic in terms of impact of food trauma and eating disorders. In my practice I will know pretty quickly if my client is somehow “holding” the impact of some generational food trauma and this helps the treatment move forward. Thank you for sharing your family history. It is a moving powerful story. And my favorite, “ we are beautiful and subject to both the tides of trauma and love. Each generation then builds on what has come before hopes that sounds wounds get washed away and works to shape more generative legacies”. I will share that with some clients this week. Thank you Courtney.
Very interesting read on family. Somehow, I am helped understand how my actions as a mother today, though trivial to the parameters of the world can really contribute to my children's lives, even when I'm long gone.
When my brother died in his early 50s from the accumulated illness brought on by a lifetime of substance abuse I said to my mom, "Have you noticed, Mom, that your father died of liver cirrhosis in his early 50s and now your son has died of liver cirrhosis in his early 50s?" My mom, it should be noted, doesn't drink at all. She dealt with her experience of growing up with an alcoholic father by becoming a teetotaller. But that was the sum total of the steps she took to unpack that experience or heal from it. The other thing that's worth noting is that my brother was adopted. He didn't even share genetic material with my mom. That's how strong generational patterns of trauma are; he didn't have to.
I was clear with my mom that I wasn't blaming her for my brother's death. He also made choices at every step. What I was hoping she would come to a deeper understanding about is all the work that I have done to interrupt those patterns of generational trauma and heal them (to the extent that any one person can). This has involved choices and boundaries that my mom has rarely understood and sometimes actively resisted. It's not easy to be the pattern-interrupter but I wouldn't trade it. I'm very proud of the people my children are becoming as a result, even when they enforce boundaries on me which are uncomfortable. It's in those moments of discomfort, my ability to sit in it and our ability to work through it openly together, that all of my work feels validated.
"It's not easy to be the pattern-interrupter" - ain't that the truth? Thank you for this poignant story from your life and for your courage.
You're welcome. Thank YOU, somewhat off-topic, for The Wise Unknown podcast. It is SO GOOD on so many levels-- the premise, the guests, the way that you are worrying notions of ambition and achievement and wisdom. I just really, really love it.
Ah, thank you so much! Last episode of the season dropping tomorrow.
My goodness this is really profound and eerily prescient and curiously relevant to the journey my wife and I have been traveling with our just turned 5 year old. Thank you for continuing to share such helpful words that resonate with so many of us long after the clicks of your keyboard have faded.
I have been thinking about this very truth since learning so much more about the history of Korea - something so many new Korean authors are making accessible to descendants of Korea, like me, who are completely removed (military/adoption, etc). The trauma of oppression, war, famine and all the things - which I knew of but never really understood - is not as distant as I once thought. Healing has only just begun in Korea - it’s all so close! I’m compelled to learn everything of my Korean ancestors’ stories so I might better learn about my self. Thank you for sharing your insights.
That's so beautiful, Kim. One hugely important intersection here is adoption.
This is beautiful, thank you for sharing. Family patterns are something I have been taking a deep dive into this year. Ancestral healing is a journey!
Beautiful, Courtney. An acquaintance wrote a book titled, “Stalking Irish Madness.” He rented a trailer and did interviews and research in Ireland to probe the roots of his family’s generations of schizophrenia. Turns out there is a significant link between famine and- think, the Irish potato famine 150 years ago - and schizophrenia. The body indeed keeps the score.
Wow, that's fascinating. Thanks for sharing, Maura. I grew up with my Irish ancestor's indentured servant contract on the wall of my kitchen!
I can’t get my mind off the traumas that are being caused by the bombing of innocent children in Gaza. When can people possibly recover from the terrible violence being inflicted by those responsible for this war? DD
Thank you for this, Courtney. I so appreciate how this family story--as you so gently tell it--radiates out to community, national, and international levels. Beautiful photos too.
I have loved ones, young, with severe illnesses and disabilities that had not appeared in the family's visible genetic history. It is useful in these cases too to realize that some cards are simply dealt, and to rise to these novel appearances with love and the best one can summon.
It is surely of great value to realize the things that do run in families- things like tendency to mood disorders or alcoholism or breast cancer and so forth- so one can be prepared for what could arise in younger generations, recognizing the first appearances of things.
I always love your appreciation of your own parents. I am Omama to my grandson. Or more accurately Ahhhh!
Thank you so much Courtney, I always appreciate your writing. You represent to me a bridge between the cultural heartland and the fringe (the space I tend to play in more).
Emotional inheritance, and the general lack of awareness in family systems, is one of the great social troubles of our times (along with more general ancestral disconnection). My experience has shown that healing, in similar defiance of the "pulled up by our own bootstraps" dictum, is a group and familial project, and that when an individual heals, it's actually healing in a family system. This is the basis of family constellation work, and also behind the premise of any most modern therapy - healing is relational.
Thus, along with our own reflection on our emotional inheritance, I feel this is an important, albeit often wildly difficult, reflection to share within the family. Said another way, for us to fully be responsible to our emotional inheritance, it means talking with our parents (and even our children, one day), about our childhoods, their childhoods, and how these legacies of trauma and resilience get passed down.
When my mother died, it was a huge shift in my nuclear family system. She was the dramatic force in the family, and her death left a gaping crater in the constellation between my father, sister and I. A couple of years later, and I gently asked for, and eventually organized, counseling between us three, first happening in dyads (sister-father, sister-brother, brother-father), and later us three together.
In my all years on the "healing path," this was the most impactful journey I have taken. Integration (the grail of healing work), necessitates being reflected in our healing by those around us, which due to the obligation of kinship, also requires those others to shift and evolve.
Is emotional inheritance something you have discussed with your family? Your papa and mama? I'd be curious to hear your share if you have, and how that continued work unfolds.
This is an amazing piece. I am a therapist and educator specializing in the treatment of eating disorders for 30 years. I am currently working on curriculum for my new course and have been researching so much. The course is entitled, Intergenerational Food/Eating Trauma and explores what you are discussing but in the context of trauma events that have yielded significant food eating issues such as the Holocaust , Spanish American war, living with food insecurity and poverty and many more. Thank you for sharing Dr. Yehuda’s quote. It’s profound and powerful. There is not much literature on the topic in terms of impact of food trauma and eating disorders. In my practice I will know pretty quickly if my client is somehow “holding” the impact of some generational food trauma and this helps the treatment move forward. Thank you for sharing your family history. It is a moving powerful story. And my favorite, “ we are beautiful and subject to both the tides of trauma and love. Each generation then builds on what has come before hopes that sounds wounds get washed away and works to shape more generative legacies”. I will share that with some clients this week. Thank you Courtney.
Very interesting read on family. Somehow, I am helped understand how my actions as a mother today, though trivial to the parameters of the world can really contribute to my children's lives, even when I'm long gone.