Generational Trauma, Secrets and Grief

Image is of a person with long dark hair, covering their face with their hands. Above their head is dark clouds with lightning bolts. Caption reads “Let’s Talk About the Difficult. You have nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide.”

Suicide. Addiction. Chronic mental illnesses. 

We don’t openly talk about it - 

We’re not supposed to. 

In my generation and older, 

We don’t know how to talk about negative feelings - 

Grief, sadness, and anger. 

We pass down an inability to communicate about difficult; 

An inability to ask for help. 

And as a result; 

We pass down our negative feelings - 

Grief, sadness, and anger. 

When I speak about such things - 

About the suicide, addiction, mental illnesses - 

I want to hear:

“You’re not alone. That’s my family too.” or

“I can’t relate to that, but you have nothing to be ashamed of and nothing to hide.”

What we hide in the dark will haunt us everywhere we go.

The single most impactful affirmation

I was ever gifted in therapy

Was this: 

“How would you behave if you truly believed you had nothing to be ashamed of, and nothing to prove?” 

The answer is, we’d talk about it. 

We’d open it up. 

Because no wound heals

As well as it could

If it’s covered over and never attended to. 

If we truly believed we have nothing to be ashamed of 

And nothing to prove - 

Then we wouldn’t have to shield our family from these feelings. 

Then I would know how to communicate the difficult - 

Then I would know how to talk about

And deal with the 

Grief, sadness, and anger. 

Then I would know how to ask for help. 

Then I would know that I am not alone. 

And then - only then - could I be confident that I’m not passing down

These traumas 

This inability to ask for help

To the next generations. 

I know I haven’t yet broken the cycle of those traumas

But maybe my children will with their next generation. 

Or maybe as a collective we won’t learn anything

And we’ll keep covering up all the difficult;

Pretending like we believe

That this stuff doesn’t exist in our families.