The Stories That Live in Our Bones
Have you wondered why certain fears, beliefs, or reactions feel older than you, as if they’ve been carried through generations? You’re not alone. Many of us hold the emotional echoes of our ancestors — shaped by their experiences, their silence, and their survival.
Intergenerational trauma, also called transgenerational trauma, refers to the transmission of trauma from one generation to the next. It can manifest in subtle ways: self-doubt, perfectionism, difficulty expressing emotion, or a deep fear of disconnection.
You don’t have to have lived through a war or a major tragedy to carry its imprint. Research shows that children and grandchildren of trauma survivors may inherit the emotional, relational, and even biological echoes of trauma — despite not having experienced the original event themselves.
Yet here lies the hope: trauma is not the only thing we inherit. So, too, are resilience, courage, and the capacity to heal.
How Trauma Can Be Passed On
Healing intergenerational trauma begins with understanding how it’s transmitted. Researchers describe three overlapping pathways: sociocultural, psychological, and physiological.
1. Sociocultural Transmission
Trauma often travels through family and community life — via parenting patterns, cultural rupture, or systemic marginalization. When caregivers have been shaped by environments of fear or control, their children may unconsciously adopt coping patterns that mirror those same conditions. Over time, these learned ways of surviving can feel “inevitable,” even though they are learned responses.
2. Psychological Transmission
Emotional wounds influence how a parent responds to a child — and how that child comes to see themselves and the world. When emotional safety, attunement, or language for grief are lacking, the child’s developing sense of self can be disrupted. What isn’t healed in one generation can quietly reappear in the next.
3. Physiological Transmission
Biology also carries stories. The field of epigenetics explores how environmental stressors — such as trauma or deprivation — can change the way genes are expressed without changing the underlying DNA sequence. While this research offers promising insights, scientists emphasize that it’s challenging to separate inherited biology from shared environment and parenting. In short: genes and stories both matter.
Healing Through Multiple Lenses
For many communities — especially those shaped by colonization, displacement, or systemic oppression — the effects of trauma are both personal and collective. Healing requires not only looking inward, but also reconnecting to culture, land, and story.
Across the world, communities are not just naming pain — they are reclaiming strength, voice, and belonging. Here are a few examples:
Black Lens
Within Black communities, the legacy of slavery, segregation, and systemic racism continues to echo across generations. In her TedX talk, clinician-scholar Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross describes tracing patterns of hypervigilance, addiction, and silence through her own family — and transforming those patterns into pathways of resilience and identity.
She reminds us: the goal isn’t to erase trauma, but to own its imprint — and from that awareness, to create new patterns of care, connection, and strength.
Indigenous Lens
In Canada, the legacy of the residential school system stands as one of the most powerful examples of intergenerational trauma. For over a century, Indigenous children were separated from their families, stripped of language and identity, and subjected to abuse and neglect.
In the 2010s, researchers began documenting the intergenerational effects of residential schools on Indigenous people and communities across Canada, tracing how trauma was transmitted through disrupted family bonds, cultural rupture, and systemic marginalization. Healing in Indigenous contexts emphasizes reconnection — to land, community, ceremony, and ancestors — and the recognition that trauma is not only individual, but also collective. Addressing it requires both personal healing and community restoration.
Jewish Lens
For Jewish communities, the Holocaust remains a central wound — and a testament to survival. In fact, influential research on what we now call intergenerational trauma often drew on studies of Holocaust survivors and their descendants. In 1966, Canadian psychiatrist Dr. Vivian M. Rakoff published one of the first papers on the topic. These studies remain foundational and are frequently referenced in the broader field of historical trauma.
More recently, Dr. Rachel Yehuda, Director of Mt. Sinai’s Traumatic Stress Studies Division, led a study of Holocaust survivors and their children focusing on a gene called FKBP5, which has been linked to the risk for depression and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Findings suggest that parental life experiences can modify the body chemistry, which can be transmitted to their children. For many, acknowledging this legacy brings a sense of relief and meaning — understanding that their struggles are not purely personal, but part of a shared inheritance that can now be transformed.
My Story: Healing the Legacies I Carry
As someone with both Jewish and Filipino heritage, I carry more than one story of survival, displacement, and resilience.
On my Jewish side: generations shaped by antisemitism, war, and exile. On my Filipino side: colonization, cultural silencing, and migration.
For years, I lived with anxiety, hypervigilance, and depression — feelings I once believed were mine alone. Now I understand that they’re also the echoes of generations before me. The suppressed stories. The unspoken losses. The survival patterns that were never named.
Through therapy and reflection, I’ve begun to ask new questions: What happened to those who came before me? What strength helped them endure? And how can I honor that strength while releasing what no longer serves me? This process — of looking backward with compassion — is at the heart of healing. When we illuminate the invisible, we reclaim our stories. And when we reclaim our stories, we reclaim our right to thrive.
Reconnecting with Strength and Wholeness
“…in understanding who we were – that will free us to embrace all of who we are now.” — Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross
Healing intergenerational trauma takes time and tenderness. It begins with curiosity — with slowing down enough to listen to the parts of you that carry both pain and wisdom.
When we honor the struggles and resilience of those who came before us, we create space for healing — not only for ourselves, but for the generations to come.
Begin Your Own Reflection
If you’d like to explore your own story, download my free guided reflection journal: Reflections for Healing Intergenerational Trauma: A Guided Self-Reflection Journal.
This journal offers gentle prompts to help you uncover your family’s stories at your own pace. (Note: This guide is for personal reflection only and not a substitute for therapy. Please only explore what feels emotionally safe for you.)
👉 Download the free guided reflection journal here
References
Canadian Encyclopedia. (2024, May 30). Intergenerational trauma and residential schools. https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/intergenerational-trauma-and-residential-schools
Mar, A. (2022, January 19). Understanding intergenerational trauma and its effects on mental health. Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-integenerational-trauma-5211898
TEDx Talk. (2022, October 05). What we carry for our ancestors: Intergenerational healing | Serene Thin Elk | TEDxSiouxFalls [Video file]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjCoYvXNaUA
TEDx Pleasant Grove. (n.d.). How to maximize the gifts of intergenerational trauma [Video file]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljdFLCc3RtM
Trauma’s effect on the life course: An overview of epigenetics. (n.d.) [Video file]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zV9sya4F5KQ