Healing Generational Trauma: How Breaking the Cycle Impacts Past, Present, and Future
I had an epiphany about generational trauma. As a trauma therapist, I am very knowledgeable about how it is passed down through generations and how millennials and Gen Z are breaking the flow of emotional trauma handed down to us as late as the early 1900s.
Understanding My Family’s Generational Trauma
Just to name a few examples:
My maternal grandmother was abandoned by her mother who won the lottery and left her family, only to be dropped off at a monastery by her father to be raised by nuns with her siblings.
My eldest aunt walked in on my paternal grandmother attempting suicide by hanging herself.
Both of my parents were raised in physically abusive environments where husbands were violent and mistreating their wives and kids.
Both sides of my family experienced two world wars and fled their home countries, willing to be permanently separated from their family for safety and opportunity for their children.
That alone can explain a lot about why I struggled with depression, anxiety, insecurity, and suicidal thoughts beginning in my teen years.
Turning Pain into Purpose
The privilege I had to intensely study psychology and sociology through my two degrees in social work sparked my lifelong interest in learning how trauma impacts us. I always thought that when I have children, I would get to stop emotional detachment and neglect with my kids. But as I aged into my late 30s, the question of having children lingered, and I sometimes felt discouraged, thinking I wouldn’t be able to share my healing in a meaningful way for my family’s future lineage.
You see, our healing feels more complete when we turn our pain into purpose and witness how it helps others avoid similar suffering.
Healing the Past While Transforming the Present
My epiphany was that healing generational trauma doesn’t just change the future—it can ripple back into the past as well. As I’ve healed and now live a life more emotionally attuned and caring toward myself and others, I realize how my parents’ experience of not having a secure and emotionally available parent shaped them emotionally and left them without exactly what they needed.
I saw my parents emptiness and felt sad that they didn’t know this kind of love. This is not me taking on the burden of parenting my parents or being the “parentified child.” This is me healing and whole, looking at my parents with clarity and compassion because my wound no longer demands reassurance from them...asking them to give me something they never received.
When I see their anxiety, I now see them as children needing the emotional reassurance and love they never received. I am then able to offer the emotional love I have learned and received elsewhere, so they are comforted, reassured, and truly seen. This is how they can now experience the love they never knew and don’t know they actually need.
The Ripple Effect of Healing Generational Trauma
This is healing generational trauma going backward, and I am so excited because if my parents can receive the love they never got, they may be different with each other (improving their marriage), different with my siblings (improving my family), and my nieces may experience the benefits as well (improving my future family).
The cycle of healing generational trauma doesn’t just move forward—when you heal, you offer a healing balm to those before you, which may or may not change them, but it makes a difference and changes the future for your family.
Your Healing Has Purpose
The powerful thought that makes me cry is that it all started with me. I had the courage to look at the brokenness and take on the burden of healing my family’s 100-year-old traumas so we could know a better love.
If you are on your own internal and emotional healing journey with your family, know that it’s not for nothing and not just for you. You carry a very important purpose. Sometimes it will look like anger, separation, and strong boundaries; other times it will look like growth, love, forgiveness, and acceptance.
Trust that your courage to want more for your life and your family is divinely guided and filled with purpose.
These are my honest and raw thoughts.
With truth & love,
Katie
P.S. These are my three beautiful nieces who are a big part of my inspiration for healing and empowering women to live their best beautiful emotionally healthy lives. Aren’t they GORGEOUS?!
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