I have a cookbook that was published in 1967 by the BC Women’s Institute. My grandma belonged to the organization, and I remember attending meetings with her as a girl, marveling at the real teacups (we only had mugs) and fancy finger sandwiches.
Of course, many of the recipes are outdated and some of the ingredients are no longer available (like suet) but I still like to make a few of those dishes, substituting tofu for pork and diced tomatoes for ketchup.
There are other things I think I inherited from my grandparents: waking up feeling like I’m already behind schedule (maybe that’s true for all farming families?) and steering clear of death and sorrow. They’re patterns that I observed, family dinner after family dinner, year after year.
I gradually absorbed them into my psyche as conditional beliefs like, “As long as I don’t acknowledge sadness, mine or anyone else’s, then I’ll be ok.” And I began carrying such beliefs in my body too, the chronic trapezius tension like my mom’s and digestive problems like my grandpa’s. These are the recipes for living that were handed down to me.
And then there’s another layer…
Epigenetic research shows that trauma is transmitted from generation to generation, particularly as the result of the psychological environment in which a child grows. And for many of us, that was an environment of silence. If you think about it, medieval survivors of raping and pillaging didn’t talk about it. Holocaust and residential school survivors didn’t talk about it. The ‘unspeakable’ horrors.
A child growing up in the midst of these silences, things that just weren’t mentioned, knows in unconscious ways what their ancestors went through. In fact, whole generations knew. They absorbed it into their psyches and bodies and passed it forward.
To us.
We received it in our DNA, maybe a lower level of a stress hormone that allows the body to bounce back; an immediate mistrust of strangers; a constant stomach-clenching worry about having enough food in the pantry; or some inexplicable sense of heaviness in the chest.
Let’s take a moment here. There are some ways of being that have been passed down to you too. How would you describe that emotional inheritance?
The good news is that you don’t have to bequeath that to your children and grandchildren. Recipes can be altered and newer, healthier versions can be passed down. Brown rice syrup instead of white sugar, right?
Three Ways to Change the Recipe you Inherited
1 Revise, reframe and re-colour your memories.
When I was small, my grandpa used to come over to our house almost every morning. He was in his 70’s, walked with a cane and was no longer able to do much physical labour. He would sit in the kitchen and criticize my dad. “He shouldn’t put those heifers in that pasture. He’s going to regret tilling that field.” It went on and on. So, as a kid, I thought my dad must be pretty bad at ranching.
One day, my mom turned to Grandpa and said, “If you’ve just come over to criticize, you can leave! He’s working 18 hours a day and doing a huge job the best he can and this kind of talk isn’t helping.”
From that day forward, I saw my dad as the dedicated, hard-working man that he was. This one moment shifted my perspective and re-coloured my memories. I saw that the criticism was really only about my grandpa, hid upbringing and his not knowing how to do anything different.
So, when you think of the unprocessed, unhealed emotional wounds that your parents and grandparents carried in themselves and perpetuated into your childhood, how might you recalibrate your memories to include not just what happened, but why?
This isn’t about excusing; it’s about building your own understanding so you can move on.
When we were small and unable to handle physical and/or emotional wounding, our systems pulled out the old recipes that were stored in our bones and muscles. And our minds created stories that made enough sense to allow us to live with something that was painful or incomprehensible. These became our memories.
As an adult, you can amend and reshape those memories with the ‘why’. A mother that abandons was abandoned. A father that criticized was criticized.
And without that old story, or with a clearer version of it, you give yourself room to carry all your positive emotional inheritances — the kindness, resilience, loyalty, gratefulness — and hand that goodness to your loved ones. And to the world.
2 Rewire to safety.
Most of us grew up in an environment in which experiencing and expressing feelings wasn’t welcome. Not just our families, but our entire culture praised and expected the repression of emotions.
This is also part of our inheritance.
And it has produced in many of us a kind of emotional self-neglect, an inability and/or unwillingness to acknowledge and meet our emotional needs. Collectively, we detached from our emotional needs to feel accepted and safe. We numbed out, stuffed down, rationalized, etc. and lost our sense that it was ok to be all of who we are.
And so now, we are shifting back into an embodied state of safety. We are developing new ways of experiencing emotions in our bodies. Rather than stone-hard trapezius muscles, you stretch and open. Instead of being instantly overwhelmed, you take in the situation and weigh your options. Through coaching, therapy, reiki, qigong, etc., you give your body a different story to carry. And with time and practice, it becomes your new natural state of being.
There’s no instant gratification in this process, just the indescribable wonder and power of healing in its own time. And the appearance of new strengths and resources from within ourselves.
And relief, ah, sweet relief.
I invite you to ponder a while,
How do I allow my emotional needs to make themselves known to me?
In what ways do I cultivate my sense of emotional safety, rootedness and protection within myself?
How do I recognize the felt sense of safety?
3 The power of clearing
Some people believe that we’re stuck with our emotional inheritance. That we inevitably perpetuate the emotions, traits and behaviors of our parents and grandparents, even the ones we’ve worked to reject. “This is how it is. This is the recipe I have to follow. This is the emotional baggage I have to carry.”
But many more of us, from shamans to neurologists, know that these recipes can be altered. I’ve supported many parents doing exactly that, lighting their candles and sage, chanting, dancing and calling in the help of their gods and guides.
I’ve led dozens and dozens of clearing ceremonies and the goal is always the same: to enable release. It’s about opening yourself so much that you can allow the release of completed energy from wherever it’s lodged in your bones and muscles.
Notice I say ‘allow’ and not ‘force’. Suspend your preconceptions about what you want to ‘get rid of’ and focus only on opening and trusting. Surrender to magic. Leave it to the unseen powers to loosen what is completed, open the golden love channels, and allow energies to move back out to the universe.
Declare a new future, dear one. Be the one that breaks the cycle and shifts the trajectory. Create a new recipe and watch the new flavors of joy and love it brings to you and your lineage.
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