Healing the Unknown

I’ve been thinking about my grandma and grandpa lately. As a child, I saw nothing wrong with their relationship. Recently, I’ve been longing for my childhood innocence. Especially today, as I look back at their relationship and see heartbreak, pain, isolation, and obligation. It never crossed my mind to think anything was wrong, even though my grandparents slept in different bedrooms. To me, their life together was all I knew. I never saw their pain. They still lived together. They ate together. We all would spend holidays together. But this morning, I realized what I had not seen: social structures that bound people together out of fear. Lost love and lost passion. It wasn’t until over 30 years later that I would find out that my grandpa cheated on my grandma when my mom was a little girl. In her fear and lack of resources my grandma returned to him. She wasn’t happy. He wasn’t happy. But this is how it was. Times were different during those days, women didn’t have many options to make money while raising three young children. Many would argue this hasn't changed, but that if for a different post. Yes, there are always exceptions, but as a collective, people stayed married because it was a way of survival. It was something that they had to do.

Times have changed, but the trauma and fear held at the base of these experiences for our ancestors was deep and pervasive. They sat atop their own childhood wounds and simmered in a world with little options. A feeling of being trapped.

In today’s world there are so many opportunities and a new sense of freedom, yet, so much pain and struggle continues around relationships. Are we carrying generational wounds? I have found myself with the feeling of "being trapped" more times than I can count. Maybe it’s only generational in that we are absorbing the underlying patterns of that which we cannot fully see as children.

The childhood lens can truly be beautiful. It lets us love purely. But as we age and life unfolds and career and money and relationships weave their way through our lives, we get a better understanding of what the foundation of our life is built on. This is why going into our body and unwinding these patterns from a primal and innocent state can heal these unseen impacts from our childhood experiences. Even in our belief that we saw the world perfect and beautiful.

Keywords: Addiction, PTSD, Depression, Codependency, Relationship Therapy, PTSD Treatment, Addiction Treatment, Codependency Treatment, Somatic Experiencing,

Elements of Change