Generational Healing

Sometimes I open my mouth and my mother's voice comes out.

Although my mother was loving and self-sacrificing, the voice that lingers is the one flavored with frustration. Why? Probably because being on the receiving end of such an interaction left barbed memories, clinging to my subconscious. It seems as if the sweet memories are coated in rich, fragrant oil that glide off, leaving behind nothing more than an aromatic whisper.

The voice scares my inner child. She promised herself that she would never lose her patience with her own children, (hah!) but it seems history is doomed to repeat itself.

Or is it?

There's lots of talk these days of "generational trauma" and learned toxic behaviors. With the stigmas behind therapy being torn down little by little, it seems as though people are beginning to recognize just how much we are all affected by our own parents' shortcomings.

But that's not what I want to talk about today.

Today, I want to flip the coin. Let's talk about generational healing.

Let's talk about stacking wins from mother to daughter, and back again.

Because I believe that in most* cases, everybody is doing the best they can with the tools that they have.

Some of us just have better tools than others.

I am the sum of my parents: the good, the bad, the in-between. From genetics to behaviors to worldviews and hobbies, who I am has been shaped from a very early age by the two individuals who have poured into me the most.

I am also the sum of my own growth. How I choose to believe. How I choose to change. How my experiences have changed me regardless of my own choices.

My son has recently become obsessed with Lego. Currently, five different sets are disassembled and thrown together in a single box, because keeping them separate seemed about as futile as trying to get my dryer to sort the socks itself before finishing its cycle.

This means that as we go to build a set, there's a considerable amount of time dedicated to searching for the right pieces and discarding the many wrong ones.

This process reminds me of what each of us go through in life. With every experience thrown at me, I have the opportunity to take the good, reject the bad, and learn a little bit more about what I'm building.

This includes the experience of being parented by two loving, fallible humans. There's plenty of good to be gleaned, but there's also some... less good.

I'm not saying my parents were bad; quite the contrary! I'm also not saying I'm better than them by any means. All I'm saying is that they (like their parents did before them) did the best they could with the tools they were given.

And now my responsibility is to take the good, glean what I can from the bad, and refine those tools a little bit more in the hopes of passing them down to my own child, where he will have the chance to do the same.

When I reflect on who my parents have been throughout my lifetime and before, I'm struck by how much they have grown. The challenges they faced as children shaped how they faced challenges as young adults. The effort they put into growing and stretching in their parenting years has translated to more peace, stability, and wisdom in their later years.

This is a growth that can be traced back through the generations. Their parents and grandparents before them each took the sum of their parts, and fashioned what they could out of the tools that were available to them.

Does this mean generational healing is perfectly linear? Of course not. Otherwise each generation would become more loving, more understanding, more wise at a younger and younger age.

Obviously that's not the case, nor has it ever been.

But the opportunity is there, for each individual.

Sort through the pieces. Take the ones that fit, the ones that are good, and discard the others. Learn what you can from those who have come before, and do not begrudge them their failings.

What remains is a really cool Lego tool that your kid will one day deconstruct, refine, and build upon with his own experiences and wisdom.

So when I hear my mother's impatient voice leaving my lips, I do not resent it. I do not blame. I do not panic.

I use it as an opportunity to reset. To recognize the growth that has resulted from generations of healing before me. To take the opportunity to build upon it with the tools that are available to me now, and to trust that where I fail, it will still be okay.

*I recognize that this is not the case for everybody. Sometimes people are vindictive and evil and are not trying to do their best or even want to do their best. But for the most part, most people really are doing the best that they can with the tools they have and with the hand they've been dealt, even if it doesn't look like it to others.