Sun or Shade?
If I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m obsessed with Glen Doyle’s podcast, “We Can Do Hard Things.” Her latest podcast featured an amazing woman, Dr. Galit Atlas. Dr. Atlas is an expert in relational psychoanalysis. An author, teacher, lecturer, recipient of the Andre Francois Award and the NADTA Research Award, Dr. Gailt’s latest book explores Emotional Inheritance.
The premise of Dr. Atlas’ podcast is that humans are not, in fact, born a blank slate. Instead, she asserts that we carry with us the unspoken history of our ancestors. In other words, we carry genetic remnants of our ancestors who lived through famines, the Holocaust, and slavery. I had no clue that this was even a possibility!
The discussion further explored how children are born with the inherent secrets that we have carried with us, knowingly or unknowingly, for generations. This worried me. I began thinking of my own secrets and how they have impacted my children. I felt like I screwed them up before they even had a chance.
My mother lost her teenage brother during a game of baseball. I started thinking about how her loss impacted me. My mom has always been an advocate of me playing sports, even baseball. However, I had this internal fear of the game of baseball. When my kids played America’s favorite sport, I was petrified watching bats swing around. I was terrified at balls flying toward the kids in the outfield who weren’t paying one iota of attention. And don’t get me started on the wild pitches being hurled toward the batter with plenty of strength, but no real aim. I also think about how neither of my kids play baseball anymore.
My thoughts and revelations went on and on…
Human beings tend to notice when subconscious ideations suddenly pop to the forefront of our minds. To illustrate: I was recently scrolling through Facebook, the podcast ruminating in the back of mind, when I saw a post from one of my friends.
He talked about how he saw his mother for the first time in over thirty years. He goes on to tell the story of his ancestors who lived in Germany during the reign of Hitler. He details how they barely escaped the Concentrations Camps by hiding in an Indonesian convent until the war was over. He recognized that generations of women in his family were impacted by the pain of their predecessors. Many years later, my friend and his niece have acknowledged this generational cycle and decided to actively step away to begin anew.
According to Dr. Gailt, our children are affected by things we say, things we don’t say, and things we aren’t even aware of beginning at birth. How do we handle this information, much less fix the conundrum? I’m still figuring that out. However, recognition is always the first step.