A note for challenging times: exploring generational trauma, values, and compassion as an active practice

Hi, how are you? I’m just checking in and popping my head and heart up to check on you and stay connected. Like many other people in this particular moment in history, I’m feeling reflective. I’m observing, I’m feeling, and I’m noticing how much is bubbling under the surface for me. There’s a lot of wondering how we got here, a lot of disbelief, a lot of anger, a lot of grief.

There are a few things that are coming up for me that feel pertinent to share that have been supportive to me as we, as a collective, navigate these challenging times. When I find myself asking the questions, “what’s happening? How can some people be okay with this? What the actual fuck is going on?”, I’m coming back to what I know about generational trauma and the way that both harm and healing can move down a family line.

You may know that when a female body comes into the world, she is born with all of her eggs. Did you know that eggs develop around the fourth month of gestation? So you, like all of us, were present for about five months within your grandmother when she was pregnant with your mother. The visual I have of this is of a connection or condensing of generations that puts all of us in modern human history not so far away from each other. If we follow the female line in this way, your grandmother was present as an egg in your great-great grandmother’s womb, three generations sharing direct experiences in different ways at the same time.

I'll follow my own lineage as a white person in the U.S. with western European roots as an example of what I mean. My maternal grandmother would be 90; she was born in 1935, meaning that her mother, my great grandmother, was pregnant during the peak of the great depression and the rise of authoritarianism in Europe pre-WWII. My great-great grandmother was likely born sometime in the 1880’s; the civil war began in 1861, and it was still legal to own human beings as property in the U.S. until 1865. Two generations before that was the revolutionary war and the continued genocide and displacement of indigenous people in what is now the United States. Two generations before that were the witch hunts in Europe, in which tens of thousands of people, mostly women, were killed. When we look at all of this from this condensed, generational perspective, none of these things were really all that long ago. This history and the ways of being that they birthed are written into our DNA as individuals and as a collective. So when I find myself looking at the violence around us asking, “how did we get here?”, this gives me some level of understanding. There are only a few genetic touch points separating us from hundreds of years of oppression as the norm. My deepest hope is that we'll eventually see the last gasping breath of this dying norm as people rise up and stand together. 

We repeat patterns again and again in different ways until someone wakes up and looks around and says, “wait, this isn’t right”. This is true in our lives and in our family systems, and it’s true in our society as well. So yes, this helps me answer the question of “wtf is happening”, and it also gives me some hope, because although harm and hate can be passed through generations, so can healing and courage. At many of these moments in history, someone looked around and noticed that what’s happening wasn’t right. Any time atrocities have occurred, there have been people to stand against them and to stand with those in need. Sometimes in small numbers, sometimes with support. This courage to notice that something isn't right and to do something about it can be passed through generations too.

Many many roles and traits exist in all of our family lines: oppressor and oppressed, victim and perpetrator, advocate and enabler. If advocacy and courage to stand up for those in need has not previously existed in your family line for whatever reason, you still have free will to create something new for yourself and for future generations. In the past month or so, I’ve had a few conversations with clients who expressed a sentiment along the lines of, “I’m just one person, I don’t know how to help”. Here's my take on that: if one person is saying that, many are, which means you're not just one person. Any action you take is better than nothing. If everyone who feels the call to help takes a tiny action, that action has a huge impact. If you want to support but don’t know what to do, here are just a few ideas:

• Donate money to an organization you trust who is doing work you believe in. RISE Coalition of Western Maryland, We are CASA, and ACLU Maryland are all organizations in Maryland who are supporting immigrant populations and fighting ICE.  
• Donate to your local food bank.
• Connect with your local community. Get to know your neighbors, and be a good neighbor. Shovel your neighbors sidewalk, offer to get groceries for someone who needs it. 
• Educate yourself about other people’s experiences.
• Learn about your own ancestral line; take a look at both the harm and the healing that have been passed on.  

Another lens I’m finding to be a helpful anchor is the lens of core values. As I notice big feelings coming up in myself around current events, things like rage, hatred, and righteousness, I’m trying to bring myself back again and again to my own values and who I want to be in all my interactions.

If you’re a client of mine, you may have done a values exercise with me at some point, but I wanted to share my own experience of this with you. Most recently, here are the values I came up with for myself: Community, Compassion, Inclusion, Courage, Authenticity, Intuition, Hope, Passion, Growth. These values serve as a reminder to me of who I want to be and how I want to show up, especially when it feels challenging. 

The most important one to me at this particular moment in time feels like compassion. As much as I can, I’m trying to live with compassion as a verb, or an action. Easier said than done, but one of the ways I’m doing this (and you can too if you want to join me) is through loving kindness (metta) meditation. This meditation involves bringing your attention to your heart space, inviting in love and compassion, and repeating a mantra, or phrase.

There are many different ways to word the mantra used in this meditation, but the one I use is “may you be happy, may you be healthy, may you be free from suffering”. You begin by sending this phrase to yourself, then a loved one, then a neutral person, then someone you don’t like or find difficult, and then to all beings everywhere. As you can imagine, sending compassion to a difficult person is…difficult. It's not a huge challenge to find folks who feel difficult right now, and there’s a part of me that kicks and screams when I do this practice. “Free from suffering??? Doesn’t this person deserve to suffer for what they've done??”. I guess at the end of the day, that’s not up to me to decide. What is up to me is whether or not I’m in integrity with who I want to be. 

Here’s an image that comes up for me when this practice feels challenging: I recently got around to watching Ted Lasso (I'm going somewhere with this, I promise). There’s a scene in the third season where Rebecca is the only woman in a meeting where a proposal is being discussed to create a super league that would raise prices and decrease access for fans. She takes a breath, pictures all of the men in the room with her as if they were children, and speaks to them with that image in mind. That’s how I’m picturing this meditation. When I wish for people I don’t like or don’t agree with or feel angry towards to be free from suffering, and I struggle to really mean it, I think what I really want to do is wish that freedom for the child that lives in them who truly needs it. 

A while back, I read Pema Chodron’s The Places that Scare You. A great deal of this book is focused on compassion practices, and it helped me understand that compassion is not permission, nor does it replace or negate anger. It's actually an active practice. It is not “kindness no matter what”, nor is it taking on the feelings of others. Compassion is, at its core, a desire for others not to suffer, whether you like them or not. Compassion can exist alongside anger, grief, action and boundaries, and can hold multiple truths at once. In relationships, this means that you can hold someone with compassion and also remove yourself from a harmful situation. You can sincerely hope that someone else is not suffering, and also be angry with them. Allowing all of this to exist at the same time is helping me navigate this practice and these times, and to understand that anger and hatred are not the same. 

If you're curious about your values and want to explore this for yourself, here is a values exercise you can do on your own. 

The last thing that I want to share that's been supportive is connection to community. I sincerely believe that together is the only way through. Being there for your friends, letting yourself lean on others, smiling at your neighbor, doing small things to support those you care about are actions that mean more than you may know, and weave a web of support for us all to connect with for the times ahead. 

At the end of the day, when you're snowed in and you need help, it'll likely be your immediate local community that you turn to. 

If you're in need of some local community right now, I'd love to invite you to a few monthly gatherings we hold here at Mind Body Wellness:

Our monthly Art Integration Gathering is on every second Monday of the month from 6:30pm - 8pm at Give Rise Studio in Frederick. If you’d like to explore creativity as a means of expression, I would love to invite you to join us. 

Led by Missy Scherr-Phillips, our amazing art therapist, this gathering offers a calm, supportive environment to gently process what you're moving through with art and creativity as allies. A variety of materials will be available for you to choose from so that you can gravitate towards what speaks to you without the pressure of a set finished product to work towards. Here, we're focused on the process rather than the end result. We gather in community, make art together, and process what we're holding. 

You can also join us for Dance Church on the third Sunday of each month at 11am at Give Rise Studio in Frederick to gather in community and engage with authentic movement. 

Dance Church is a monthly gathering that is a minimally guided, free-flowing movement practice designed for liberation, connection, and creative expression. No dance experience is necessary, and you are welcome just as you are. The dance is not choreographed, nor are there any expectations around your abilities.

I would love to know how you're doing, truly. If you're in need of support, please reach out: come to a gathering, work with one of our therapists, get in touch. 

With love, 

Nicole