Healing Generational Trauma - an Unexpected Conversation with my Mother
I’ve been really ruminating on the idea that, at our core, we are all wounded children raised from generations of wounded children. This is not a victim statement, but an observation for change, for I feel it won’t change, we won’t be able to raise our own children without the same wounds, unless we actively work on understanding and breaking the trauma that (at most times) is unknowingly passed down.
This week, I had the most profound example of that with my own mother, and it felt so HEALING. I was able to identify it, and we were able to unpack it, but it took months and months of introspection to be able to hear the message in a way that I felt comfortable responding to it with authenticity.
And the ensuing connection between my mom and I was worth all of that “work”.
So where did it start? For me, it began when I restarted EMDR in 2019. EMDR is a healing module best described here:
“EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a psychotherapy that enables people to heal from the symptoms and emotional distress that are the result of disturbing life experiences. Repeated studies show that by using EMDR therapy people can experience the benefits of psychotherapy that once took years to make a difference. It is widely assumed that severe emotional pain requires a long time to heal. EMDR therapy shows that the mind can in fact heal from psychological trauma much as the body recovers from physical trauma. When you cut your hand, your body works to close the wound. If a foreign object or repeated injury irritates the wound, it festers and causes pain. Once the block is removed, healing resumes. EMDR therapy demonstrates that a similar sequence of events occurs with mental processes. The brain’s information processing system naturally moves toward mental health. If the system is blocked or imbalanced by the impact of a disturbing event, the emotional wound festers and can cause intense suffering. Once the block is removed, healing resumes. Using the detailed protocols and procedures learned in EMDR therapy training sessions, clinicians help clients activate their natural healing processes.”
I had done some really effective rounds in my 20’s, and with the hubris of youth, thought myself “cured”. 2019, nearly a decade later, brought with it some severe anxiety episodes, seemingly out of nowhere. The upside was that it caused me to make some changes - medication, for the first time since 2001, and to find a therapist specializing in EMDR. And I’m grateful I did, for we all know what 2020 brought. But, because, by then, I had an established relationship with my therapist, we seamlessly transitioned to Zoom therapy with butterfly hugs as the bilateral EMDR stimulation and used the forced downtime to plunge into some deep shadows.
Including my extreme shame around sex.
One of the childhood memories that came up during these sessions was the time I was “caught” playing “doctor” with a friend who was a boy when I was very young — around 3 or 4. Even saying the name of the game, playing doctor, despite it being a very common way to describe a very natural thing between young children, but even the name brought up some intense feelings. Especially as I remember my mother’s BIG reaction. There was a lot of yelling, very clear that doing what we were doing was WRONG. Which, as I was a child who had a lot of feelings normally living in a household without a lot of yelling, it left a big impression.
And perhaps the impact of that carried forward more than I knew.
There were other incidents that came up in those sessions, but this memory served as a linchpin for understanding that I could feel shame around sex. Meaning if it felt good in my body, but my caretakers were telling me I wasn’t supposed to do it, that it was “bad”, what did that mean as I got older?
Identifying the Experience we Both had as Children
Fast forward to last week, almost a full year into the pandemic lockdown for us. 2020 had turned into 2021. Things had evolved in my self-searching journey, and a beautiful by-product of that is a deepening in my relationships with my parental figures, but especially the one with my mother.
We were talking about generational trauma after her cousin posted a young picture of my grandmother, my mom’s mother, on Facebook. And we talked about how we had a matriarchal lineage of mothers raising children after their mothers had passed away young. My grandmother died when my mom was pregnant with me, and my grandmother’s mother died when she was two. She was raised by her grandmother, who as an undocumented immigrant from Ireland, left no indication she came over with her mother. It has always felt like a lot of loss, specifically around mothers and daughters.
In response to those thinkings, my mother launched into an “old” story of how she and her siblings (she’s the middle of five) had grown up. A story I had heard before, but I was prepared to listen because she does the same for me, and then she mentioned a tidbit - a little snippet of a story I had never heard before: “Gosh, one time I was caught playing doctor with a friend when I was little, and the whole house FREAKED OUT.”
I stopped her and laughed. “MOM!” I almost shouted. “You did the same thing TO ME!”
“What?” She clearly was baffled by my response.
I told her the memory that had surfaced in therapy almost 6 months before and I asked if she remembered it as a parent. She said no, but she remembered that childhood friend. She told me she thought he was my first love at 3 years old.
And because of the internal work I had done, I was able to recognize and point out that her reaction to me as a small child was the same reaction her mother had with her when she was young.
That she, as a parent, emulated her parent’s behavior because she had no other template, even though she had HATED it when she was the child.
And we could laugh and take it further - to me as a parent, now that I am aware, could I have a different reaction if I caught my son in the same situation?
She laughed: “You’d freak out too!” And I agreed - “probably!”
But now, because of this awareness, this conversation, could I freak out, but still react differently?
Could I say (if he were still a young child): “It’s ok to be curious about bodies! But this is probably something you ask mommy or daddy about first.” And could I articulate the most important part (at any age)? That there is no shame in feeling these things! But there are appropriate times and places to express them.
In that conversation with my mom, at that moment on a regular day in the present moment, I felt like we healed something in the past. I honored the little girl in her and forgave the mothers, all of them. And the little girl in me found some peace, some sense of validation that she - that I - wasn’t bad.
And I’m so grateful to be able to hear it. To embody it in a new way. To (hopefully) not carry it on to other generations. To love and accept my parents as flawed, beautiful, humans who are trying to navigate with love in an unbalanced world, just like me.
Photo on blog page by guille pozzi on Unsplash
Header Photo Saulius Sutkus on Unsplash
