A few weeks ago, I met with Dr. Mariel Buqué. And chiiiiild, I am not the same. From the moment she clicked “Join Meeting” on her computer, she was schooling me across the screen and across all of my generations before and after. She is the brilliant author of Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma, as she graciously ushers us into reconceptualizing our mental health and overall wellbeing.
The thing is…my parents made mistakes. Welcome to all parents, including me. We talk in the mental health space about how we get to make mistakes. How we deserve to be human. Yet most of us struggle to make those same concessions for our parents.
The reality is that they also have a nervous system that can get activated based on its own programming. That programming came from their own environments AND genetically from their parents. Dr. Mariel explains that our grandmothers had our parents in their womb. At 5 months gestation, our parents (while in grandmothers’ wombs) had all of their precursor sex cells, which eventually became us. Three generations in one body. Any adverse experiences our grandmothers had could have impacted their genetic expression, which appeared in our parents, and later in us.
We all have a fight-flight-freeze-fawn response that gets activated when we sense danger (there are actually more that have evolved over time). For me, when something feels like a threat, my system is wired to go into fight mode. But I know I am a patient person. Both can be true. When I feel safe, my personality is inherently patient. This is my normal state of being. AND my stress response is fight.
Both of my grandmothers and parents experienced significant traumas, which likely wired me to have a more active nervous system. This might be you, too. Because trauma is so common, in fact, this is most of us to some degree.
We didn’t know what we didn’t know. But now we can do better for ourselves and help heal generations before and after us. So now what? Check out the podcast, pick up the book. Do it for you and for everyone around you. And Dr. Mariel is incredibly generous with so many resources you can use at home, including her own grandmother’s healing tea recipe. I felt Lighter with every page.
xoxo…mona
On the Pod
Belonging + Intergenerational Trauma w/Dr. Mariel Buqué
In this clip, clinical psychologist Dr. Mariel Buqué, author of Break the Cycle, shares how intergenerational trauma develops in our bodies before we are even born. Her voice and words are soothing, moving, and uplifting. I cried countless times in this episode. She is all things brilliant and Light, y’all.
Listen to the full episode on your favorite podcast platform.