Generational Trauma

 Every so often I stumble across evidence of generational trauma.  I'm not so good at spotting it in my own life because it is what is normal for me. 

I applaud those who are aware and work hard to break the chain of generational traumas.  I have a member of my family who had commented about choosing to go to kids' activities.  In his childhood, kids' activities must have come way down the priority list and he still felt that pain in his adulthood.  So he didn't want to pass that on to his own children.  He felt it important to make the effort to go to activities and not just space them off.  I totally agree with that stance.  It is important to show your children that you think they are important. It is one small thing he is working on, but even small things can be important. 

His children have a couple of newer toys that seem to catch hair.  I will pick hair out of a toy once, but after that it is scissor time.  I have not much patience for it.  So, his children kept doing whatever they do that catches their hair. And each time he would carefully untangle their hair from the toy. I made a comment about my stance.  I wasn't trying to get him to do it my way, just a comment because I had done my time with hair untangling.  I have to commend him for his patience on that. 

His mother was there, and I must have set off a trigger.  She told this story of when she was a child and had long hair.  Her father had to go on a trip and when he came back, her mother had cut off all her hair.  She commented that her mother had done it for spite because the long hair was the thing that she and her dad did, the brushing and brushing.  Now I don't know that...maybe it was...maybe it wasn't.  It could have been that that long hair got tangled and Mom was not going to spend all the time brushing and brushing.  Dad was gone for like three weeks.  Well he beat up his wife for having cut the hair. The whole point of the story was the loss of the hair.  Not the domestic violence that could not have only been because one time there was a haircut. 

Well no hair got cut from getting tangled in the present day.  But later I did ask my family member if he had long hair as a child.  Oh no, he did not.  Probably because his mom didn't want to deal with his curly curly hair.  It was an interesting note to the story about hair.  It was fascinating seeing the generational trauma that still caused pain to this day.  Nothing starts in a vacuum. And nothing heals that is not recognized.