Let’s talk family healing.

I’m very slowly making my way through the book It Didn’t Start with You by Mark Wolynn about how family trauma is passed down through generations.

Did you know that when mice are given an electric shock (mean scientists, I know) every time they smell cherry blossoms, their descendants TWO generations later will jump at that smell – even though it was only their grandparents who experienced that trauma! Lots of other real life human examples too (but that one intrigued me.)

Then I think about the state of our world -and how maybe all the unresolved family and ancestral trauma everyone’s lugging around is reaching a boiling point.

Would the world be different if more of us took responsibility for healing the wounds of our own families? Connecting with the family spirits – living or dead, imagining what we know of their lives, offering compassion, acknowledging their grief, anger or regret that we blindly carry inside ourselves -and then doing the work of healing.

Not turning a blind eye to what we pass onto our own kids, pretending everything is fine or feeling victimized or holding grudges against certain relatives or projecting judgments onto other people’s families – or any of the other ways we sidestep the hard work of our own healing – but actually doing the inner work, facing the family demons buried within.

Warning – it’s really hard! Lots of tough stuff to face, our own shadows, deep grief and pain we don’t want to see. So much easier to just stay in our comfort zones with good enough.

Maybe that’s why there’s so much anger, anxiety, depression choking the air these days.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? – can you see how trauma has rolled down through your family?

Do you think personal healing affects the larger world? (whether or not you have kids, or they’re grown or not?)