August 2025 Newsletter
Healing intergenerational Trauma
Healing intergenerational Trauma
We are all haunted by history. We carry the unspeakable in our bones.
Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands
Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s Hands
Dear Ones,
This month, I want to speak from a tender and vital place—the place where personal history meets collective inheritance. I’ve come to believe that much of what we carry isn’t just ours. It belongs to those who came before us. And yet, we are the ones called to feel it, to heal it, and to alchemize it into something sacred.
As many of you know, my journey began in rupture. I found my mother hanging when I was two and a half. My father, shaped by war and loss, was largely absent. I was raised in the shadows of suicide, military trauma, displacement, murder, abuse, and silence. It took me decades to understand that the pain I carried wasn’t just mine—it was part of a much larger story.
This month, I want to speak from a tender and vital place—the place where personal history meets collective inheritance. I’ve come to believe that much of what we carry isn’t just ours. It belongs to those who came before us. And yet, we are the ones called to feel it, to heal it, and to alchemize it into something sacred.
As many of you know, my journey began in rupture. I found my mother hanging when I was two and a half. My father, shaped by war and loss, was largely absent. I was raised in the shadows of suicide, military trauma, displacement, murder, abuse, and silence. It took me decades to understand that the pain I carried wasn’t just mine—it was part of a much larger story.
The past is not dead. It is not even past.
William Faulkner
William Faulkner
We are all born into fields—ancestral, cultural, and societal—and those fields are often saturated with unresolved trauma. Holocaust survivors. Refugees. Enslaved peoples. Immigrants stripped of their language and culture. Soldiers who never came home in spirit. Families fractured by systemic racism, antisemitism, patriarchy, colonialism, and war. Their unspoken stories echo in our bodies and nervous systems. We inherit not just their resilience, but their hypervigilance. Their grief. Their fear and their patterns of contraction, silence, and survival.
And here’s the part that breaks me open:
We have normalized this pain.
We call it personality. We call it culture. We call it strength.
We have normalized this pain.
We call it personality. We call it culture. We call it strength.
But what if the anxiety, the over-responsibility, the difficulty receiving love, the distrust of rest, what if those are not personal flaws, but inherited survival strategies? What if they were intelligent adaptations… that no longer serve us?
The pain that is not transformed is transmitted.
Richard Rohr
Richard Rohr
Legacy burdens, what Internal Family Systems calls the ancestral wounds we carry, are passed down until someone turns toward them. Someone like you. Like me. Like us.
We are that generation.
We are the ones capable of remembering what was exiled. Of feeling what was too dangerous to feel. Of regulating what was once chaos. Of co-creating safety that our ancestors never knew.
This is the work of healing—not to fix the past, but to bring it home, to feel, release, and honor the burdens of our ancestors.
To reclaim what has been disowned and restore the sacred balance in ourselves, our families, and our communities.
Each time we pause to notice a trigger rather than act it out, we reclaim a piece of our soul. Each time we breathe into a moment of overwhelm instead of dissociating, we disrupt a centuries-old pattern.
We are that generation.
We are the ones capable of remembering what was exiled. Of feeling what was too dangerous to feel. Of regulating what was once chaos. Of co-creating safety that our ancestors never knew.
This is the work of healing—not to fix the past, but to bring it home, to feel, release, and honor the burdens of our ancestors.
To reclaim what has been disowned and restore the sacred balance in ourselves, our families, and our communities.
Each time we pause to notice a trigger rather than act it out, we reclaim a piece of our soul. Each time we breathe into a moment of overwhelm instead of dissociating, we disrupt a centuries-old pattern.
The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
Rumi
Rumi
Each time we bring presence, authenticity, and transparency into a relationship, we offer not only repair, but revolution.
Healing isn’t linear. It’s cellular. Relational. Ancestral. Spiritual. It moves through the nervous system, from dysregulation to coregulation to self-regulation. It requires somatic practices, rituals of remembrance, and fierce compassion for the parts of us that are still afraid.
Let’s be honest—our collective nervous system is frayed.
We’ve normalized urgency, disconnection, comparison, and burnout.
To survive, we must denormalize this way of being. To soften and slow down…
We must become trauma-informed human beings, not just consumers.
We must move from individualism to individuation—the mature expression of self in service of the whole.
Healing isn’t linear. It’s cellular. Relational. Ancestral. Spiritual. It moves through the nervous system, from dysregulation to coregulation to self-regulation. It requires somatic practices, rituals of remembrance, and fierce compassion for the parts of us that are still afraid.
Let’s be honest—our collective nervous system is frayed.
We’ve normalized urgency, disconnection, comparison, and burnout.
To survive, we must denormalize this way of being. To soften and slow down…
We must become trauma-informed human beings, not just consumers.
We must move from individualism to individuation—the mature expression of self in service of the whole.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
I genuinely believe that every one of us is a node of healing in the web of humanity.
Your presence matters. Your tenderness matters. Every act of self-compassion is a prayer across time.
So this month, I invite you to pause. To listen inwardly.
To honor those who came before, and the resilience that leads to a different path forward.
Because beneath all trauma lies a buried love story.
And we are here to remember it.
With love, gratitude, and deep respect for your journey,
Michael
Your presence matters. Your tenderness matters. Every act of self-compassion is a prayer across time.
So this month, I invite you to pause. To listen inwardly.
To honor those who came before, and the resilience that leads to a different path forward.
Because beneath all trauma lies a buried love story.
And we are here to remember it.
With love, gratitude, and deep respect for your journey,
Michael
We must remember: our nervous systems are shaped in relationship, and they are also healed in relationship.
Deb Dana
Deb Dana
