We Are the Ancestors
At the center of all my sorrows,
I have felt a presence that was not
mine alone.
Susan Griffin
This morning, I wake with a sob and a cringe from a dream. Dreams sometimes make no sense or are erased upon awakening. But then later, a reaction or a comment falls out of my mouth, a pain in a place I cannot track --Where does this all come from? Triggers can sprout out of a comment, a taste, or a smell. It can often seem there is no damn reason why we do or feel the way we do.
Memory holds the cognitive roadmap of our life, but there is a deeper and older imprint written in the ecosystem of this body. From birth, even before we have words, we possess an instinct for attachment and safety, and unconditional love. But what happens to us even in utero, may be the opposite of that.
Violence, neglect, or unprocessed sorrow is recorded in the developing body and can create tension and a constant hyper-vigilance. Our early non-verbal experiences are not necessarily conscious. Emotional and neurological imprints are wordlessly embedded in the cells and nervous system.
This should be a call for a compassionate understanding and respect for the exquisite recording mechanisms lodged inside. Perhaps it could be one of the most overlooked pieces of repair and recovery.
But perhaps, we are not programmed to have such respect for ourselves.
We may have enough evidence and support to sort out our history. But there may be a buried sorrow we cannot determine that goes beyond our conscious grief.
War, the Holocaust, slavery, poverty, rape, violence, sexual abuse, and neglect are all embedded in our DNA. We hold this legacy of trauma. But we also hold the story of our survival. Our history, including resilience, power--even our shadows--were the survival tools crafted out of trauma over generations, even if they no longer serve us.
Reckoning with what we come from, including the shadow side of what we have inherited, gives us another tool to understand how we can respond to the world and to ourselves with compassion.
And there is the other end of lineage: our own children and descendants yet to be born. Part of recovery is not repeating what was done to us, or even what happened to our ancestors. The deep work of healing honors these elements of our lives, respecting what we have inherited for survival even as we create a new imprint.
Within a hundred years, our bodies will eventually go back to the earth. Few will remember who we are today or what we did.
But imagine pressing your hand against this earth recognizing we will one day be the ancestors. We will leave a trace of our lives through our DNA to our descendants, and in the very ground we inhabit.
The deep courageous work of recovery embodies our growth in brain, body, and soul. It can change the inner template of generations of trauma.
It is our gift to those who go after us.