Unraveling Ancestral Trauma: Why you NEED to Know About Ancestral Trauma and How it is Showing up in Your Daily Life...

Could the hardships you face today be echoes of trauma from generations past? Join me, Kirsty Harris, as we unravel the profound impact of ancestral trauma on our psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being. Through the lenses of epigenetics and historical events like slavery, colonization, genocide, and the Holocaust, we explore how these deep-seated wounds permeate our lives. We pay special attention to the unique struggles women face due to historical oppression, from witch trials to societal constraints, emphasizing the importance of recognizing and healing these inherited traumas.

In this episode, we also delve into the powerful influence of family narratives on our identities and mentalities. Personal stories illustrate the complexities of breaking free from cycles of domestic violence and inherited beliefs. By understanding that our struggles often stem from ancestral experiences rather than personal shortcomings, we can find solace and clarity. To wrap up, I wholeheartedly invite you to share your thoughts, subscribe, and leave a review. Your insights and feedback are essential as we continue this collective journey of healing and self-discovery.

Chapters

• 0:01 Ancestral Trauma and Epigenetics
• 8:34 Family Identity and Ancestral Trauma
• 22:08 Expressing Gratitude and Encouragement

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hello and welcome to Find your Inner Glow, the podcast that focuses on mind, body and soul, and I am your host, kirsty Harris. I am a spiritual transformation coach and an intuitive healer. I have been helping women for years and years and I am here just to give you the knowledge that you need to really tap into your essence and find your inner glow. So get comfortable and let's get into today's episode. Hello me darling, how are you Get my little Bristol accent on there? And welcome back. Today we are talking about ancestral trauma. Obviously, I'm very singly today, very terribly singly, so sorry to your earbuds earbuds but today we are going to be talking about how ancestral trauma influences your life, okay, and why you need to be aware of it, because it doesn't only affect you through like spirituality, like I hear a lot of ancestral trauma patterns, that or generational trauma interchanged and used a lot in the spiritual realm but not so much in just like regular day-to-day talk, and I really fucking feel like we should talk about it because it's a psychological, a spiritual, a sociological and history or historical part of ancestral trauma. So today we're going to be diving into that, okay, and it just absolutely deserves its own spotlight, okay. So what exactly is ancestral trauma? Own spotlight. Okay, so what exactly is ancestral trauma? Basically, ancestral trauma refers to any of the psychological, emotional, spiritual effects that have been passed down through generations within families. Okay, this is absolutely mad to me. Okay, and how this works. This is not just some spiritual bullshit woo, woo guys, this is literally scientific research in the study of epigenetics. Okay, and the study of epigenetics is absolutely sensational in terms of demonstrating the extreme examples of ancestral trauma. Okay, so you know, people have studied the ancestors of those who were, um, you know, involved in slavery, colonization, genocide, the holocaust, like so, so very much, or even in severe oppression. Okay, so, basically, what happens in these generations is that there are very clear signs that emotional, behavioral and personality traits get passed down, even to, like, grandchildren, and something that is so fucking like mad to me is that, like survivors of the holocaust, so those people who survived the holocaust, we can see in their grandchildren, who were never alive during the holocaust, have no kind of connection or personal connection to it, other than their grandmother living through it. They demonstrate the same behaviours, personality traits and emotional responses to the grandmother who was obviously in the Holocaust. The grandchild wasn't. So it's just absolutely mad. There's evidence of that same behaviour, that same survival mode, that same thought process, everything in the grandchild. That was nowhere near the holocaust. And this is why this is so fucking important, especially as women.

Speaker 1: 3:08

Hello when we're talking about severe oppression. We've been oppressed for how long? Don't forget, we have the witch wound as well, where, when we were taught not when we were taught, but when we were seen as medicine women we were punished and killed like literally. One of the most uh, shocking things that stood out to me was basically during the Salem witch trials and obviously witch trials all over the countries, including the UK. We had witch trials in the UK, not just in Salem, but one of the ways they would test if you were a witch would be like they would tie rocks to you and then throw you into a river or into like a lake and see if you would drown. If you drown, you're a witch. If you floated, you're a witch and you would be killed.

Speaker 1: 3:50

So you know like this is severe oppression, like, imagine it coming from a line in which, like that happened to your family, like, like you know, that's without the general society oppressing us, like not being able to vote, not being able to drive marriages which included the really society oppressing us, like not being able to vote, not being able to drive Marriages which included a really dark side of it of like forced acts of sexual behaviour and all sorts, because obviously you had to deliver your duty as a woman. Right, we are living through our ancestors. Well, this hasn't actually been that long ago. So if you're wondering, why do women really find it hard to stand up for themselves, set boundaries, really worry when they're afraid around men and won't say no, like go away, I don't want to be harassed by you, or things like that? This is all not just for you to understand. It is literally a generational thing which we have to understand.

Speaker 1: 4:44

Sorry, I've got a bit of a sore throat today. I feel like I'm still pretty ill, but I just really wanted to use my voice today to talk about this because I just felt like I don't know. You know, when I sit down to the pod and I start to talk about stuff like this, like it really comes out of my heart, like it comes out of my heart, like I channel it and I just feel like it comes out of my heart, and whoever needs to hear this right now, will absolutely hear it, which is just so fucking beautiful to me. And, yeah, so when we're talking about generational trauma or ancestral trauma, whatever you want to call it, this is the concept that basically say that the repercussions of profound suffering that's happened in your family line can ripple through generations and can impact you and how you show up in your life on a daily basis. Now take a moment to take that in, because that is fucking wild, right? That is like, oh, my god, kirstie, like, so you're telling me that what my great-grandmother went through, what my great-great-great grandmother went through, can still be impacting me today. And the answer is, fuck, yes, and even from a biological standpoint, like this fact blows my freaking mind.

Speaker 1: 5:52

So your grandmother would have grown your mum in her womb, okay, and when we are fetus, like when we are little fetuses fetuses is that the word, I don't know. Fetuses is a very cute word, so we'll keep with that. Um, so when we're little fetuses fetuses is that the word, I don't know. Fetuses is a very cute word, so we'll keep with that. Um, so we're little fetuses? Um, we grow all the eggs that we're ever going to have in our lifetime. So, like when your grandmother is is right. So stick with me. Grandmother is pregnant on your mum. Your mum is a fetus. She has all her eggs that she'll ever have before she's born. So that means that your little egg was in your mum, that was inside the womb of your grandmother. So everything that your grandmother experienced got passed on onto your mum but also affected you because you were an egg in the fetus in the womb. I hope I explained that right. I'm going to just explain it one more time, just to get your head around it, because I don't have a handy diagram, because I'm audio, I'm an audio queen, but yeah, so basically, grandmum, she's pregnant, she's having a little girl. It's your mum. Your mum is in the womb. La la la, she's growing away, nice. As she's growing in the womb, she's getting all of her eggs that she'll have for her fertility. One of those eggs is you. So you are that tiny little egg inside that fetus, inside your grandmother.

Speaker 1: 7:21

So when we talk about epigenetics, when we're talking about this stuff, we are looking at how behaviors and environment can cause changes in our genes. Okay, and epigenetics are changes that are reversible. Okay, they do not change your DNA sequence, but they are passed down through your DNA, because it's basically how your body reads your DNA. That's how you change it, okay, so it's hardwired into you, but you need to change how your body reads that DNA. So, and that comes down to a lot of mindset work, a lot of, like, diving into your subconscious, listening into your soul, work and, yeah, like when we are doing this, research shows that trauma can leave a chemical mark on somebody's genes and then this can be passed down through generations and like, not just to and then this can be passed down through generations and like, not just to your next generations. This can be generations after generations after generations. It's often why we see a lot of stuff within the black community of, like, people still talking about how slavery has massively affected them and it has because it's affected them on a fucking DNA level Okay, affected them, and it has because it affected them on a fucking DNA level, okay. So, however, people are experiences, that is, experiencing their trauma or their experience of life is absolutely valid, and genes can be a way to explain that as well.

Speaker 1: 8:34

So, with all that being said, let's have a little look at what it means to talk about your family narrative. So your family will often have a story that encompasses their history. Okay, this will be including the traumas that they endured. These will be parts of stories that literally just are your family identity and can influence the psychological development of young people. So, for example, like, like the sort of dynamic in which I grew up, there was domestic violence in my home. There's domestic violence in my nan's home. Like this was always kind of the way that all men are horrible. Men always treat you horribly. This sort of things I've also saw it in my great-grandparents and god knows beyond. So it's, it's just that thing of like you grow up in the environment and then you have the DNA level. Like there's so many multiple layers to this.

Speaker 1: 9:25

Okay, and this is why changing it and changing how you see yourself and stepping out of maybe victim mentality or something can be so incredibly hard. You may not even realize you're in victim mentality because your family has always decided to have this identity that things are really hard for me. I've always had to work really fucking hard for what I have and uh, nothing ever comes easy to me and money is always scarce, and uh, there's violence in the home and this and this and this, like it can still, um, just hold that, that victim mentality, within your family story and when you start to step away from that and then you start to change, you start to really become the odd one out. And I speak to a lot of women all the time at the moment about how like they just feel like the odd one out, then they don't, they don't fit in, they don't really have a great relationship with their parents, they don't really have a great relationship with siblings parents. They don't really have a great relationship with siblings and they just feel really like the odd one out.

Speaker 1: 10:21

And this can feel so fucking lonely. And, babe, if this is you, I see you and I feel you, because I feel like that too, I'm completely different to my family doesn't mean I don't love them, just means that I'm a very different kettle of fish to them and I actually have nothing in common with a lot of my family. But you make the effort because you love them, right, um? And I just think like that's okay, like not everyone is going to have this beautiful, loving, compassionate family. Sometimes that's not what the lesson our soul needed to learn in this lifetime. If you believe in, you know soul contracts where you decide the lessons you're going to learn before you come here. There's even a theory that your parents pick you, or you pick your parents before you come here as well. So it's just something to kind of bear in mind as you're navigating this land of like ancestral stuff.

Speaker 1: 11:09

So I told you a little bit about my family, my family identity, which, to be honest, is a brand new concept which I literally just birthed. On the on the um podcast just now, I was like shit, there's such thing as a family identity, wow, like wow. This is why I sit down, because I learn so much from my own mind. But yeah, but can you imagine, like taking yourself back and hearing up about your family's hardships? Like you never have money. It's always hard. You always have to work really fucking hard for you what you want. Your ancestors or your parents, like they worked really fucking hard, so hard that, like you know, the work almost killed them because they worked so hard. And these narratives can really instill a sense of pride and strength, like you have to work really fucking hard to get anything that you want in this life, and like that can just make life feel really hard. You can make a decision if life is hard for you or not.

Speaker 1: 12:03

If life is hard for you, you're most likely to be in that victim mentality and, like everyone talks about, victim mentality is like a really bad thing. But it's really not a bad thing to be in a victim mentality. It is just a product of how we are coping with a situation and that's absolutely fine. I do feel like shame and stigma around the victim mentality is huge, but it's not. It's just one of those things that happens. That's one of those things in which that we cope or we learn to survive, and that doesn't serve you anymore now that you know so, also, like other things that we can do by hearing the hardships of our family, is just like put loads of fear and anxiety into us like I have massive fear and anxiety around money or, like you know, you may feel like a sense of responsibility to rectify the past. Like you might feel like, right, I'm not letting that happen to me. This isn't going to be my life and you need to change it, which is a really big fucking responsibility.

Speaker 1: 12:59

Okay, the weight of unhealed trauma, unhealed grief and everything can literally seep through your family culture and affect your relationships, your emotional well-being, how you show up in the world, how confident you are, where your self-esteem lives, where your self-compassion lives, where you are in terms of how you feel spiritually, like. It affects so many different things and I think that, hopefully, the comfort that you will get from this episode is that it didn't start with you. There's nothing wrong with you. It's all about what happened to you, but also what happened to your family and to your family identity. Okay, something else to really consider when we're looking at ancestral trauma is our cultural context as well.

Speaker 1: 13:41

Okay, so cultural trauma occurs when a large group experiences an event that leaves marks on their collective memory. Okay, so some you know we've talked about the holocaust, slavery, war, colonization, like all of that different stuff and not only just being the victim of that but also the facilitator of that. Okay, both being both sides of the fence can cause trauma, okay, so for many communities, cultural trauma is like intertwined with their identity. Like I mentioned earlier, when black people are like well, slavery is still very much alive and well in terms of how it feels within my family. Well, fuck, yeah, of course it does. It wasn't actually that long ago. So the collective memory of these traumatic events can really influence like behaviors, beliefs, practices of like that specific group and yeah, it's just one of those things where you have to understand where people are coming from with that and meet them with empathy, because you don't understand what it's like to come from a family line like that. But you can ask questions and, you know, become more educated in in that so that you can better support those around you.

Speaker 1: 14:46

Um, you know, for me, particularly like everyone, everyone knows this I I date black people, so obviously this would come up for me in deciding to have a relationship or to have a partnership or a marriage with a black man who would have had this potentially be in their family line in one way shape or form. I'm not saying every black person was a slave and what I'm saying is it could be a potential within their ancestry which I would need to consider for, like, their trauma and also for, like, how that will be passed on to my child and how best to support my child. Like there are so many different layers to this, okay, where you can really look at the people that you're interacting with and, I think, picking the person that you want to be with and have a child with, and understand that their trauma, massive, right. Okay. So if you're in a relationship heterosexual relationship you're a woman you want to date a man, trauma affects the male sperm up until the point of conception. Okay. So when you are born, like when you're born, when you're you know you're born as a woman with your eggs, your eggs will won't, will not be impacted by any trauma that you go through in your life. Okay then, when men are like out and about doing whatever, their sperm can be impacted by trauma. So if you are getting into a relationship with a man with massive trauma that is not ready to deal with it, address it, let it go. Anything like that, run for the fucking hills, babe. Run for the fucking hills because it will have massively impact their sperm, which will impact the DNA that is passed on to your baby, which will affect the epigenetics of the baby.

Speaker 1: 16:28

And yeah, it's just something to be really fucking mindful of. Again, this is not taught anywhere. I've never seen this really publicized online on socials anywhere about how important it is to pick the right partner. Like I did read in Paul Brunson's book that having a relationship is the most important decision that you'll ever make in your life, and it is absolutely true. So if you are somebody who goes from relationship to relationship.

Speaker 1: 16:54

I urge you to stop and I urge you to understand yourself, to come back to yourself, to heal your fucking trauma, because if you decide to go on and have a child with somebody, you could be stuck with living out that trauma again and again and it passes on to generations and generations. Anyway, that's just my fucking five pence advice. You could tell me to go fuck myself, but honestly it's a real big deal where it is a big deal for me anyway. So I think we understand why this is important. Okay, it just really helps us to understand where our fears and anxieties are coming from and they may not belong to us. And this is this is a real good place to start healing and breaking the cycle of trauma. Okay, we haven't got a time machine. We can go back and change the past, but we can acknowledge the pain and work through it. We can either go to therapy, community support you can have coaching with me. You can have energy healing with me, um, you know whatever. It feels good to you to be able to talk about this space in a place where somebody will hold you and guide you to the next steps in which that you can take a step forward in breaking this trauma and this ancestral line. So if you're like cool, fuck, I'm super interested in this here are a few things that you can do in order to kind of get to grips with what's going on for you and like ancestral trauma and how to address it. So awareness and education. You've done the first step by listening to this podcast.

Speaker 1: 18:18

Okay, now it's time for you to go away and look at your family history. Have a look at it in the historical context of your community as well, to give you a clear picture of the traumas that may be affecting you. What does that mean? Go back and look at the stories that your family constantly say oh, we never had any money, or we've always been poor, or we've always been rich, or we've always had this, or we've always had that, whatever it is. Literally go back and write them all down. Next up, get your professional support in place. So if you want to come have coaching with me, we will look at how we intertwine intergenerational trauma in with where you are, literally what? My onboarding questionnaire into my one-to-one space is literally all about your ancestral trauma, so that I have a really good idea about what's going on for you right before you even start with me.

Speaker 1: 19:08

Storytelling and sharing like literally talk about your story, like talk about your family you know you may want to have some creative expression, like writing, art, creating music, whatever like just storytelling and sharing about your family can really help foster understanding and healing and especially if there's like a cultural element to to their family line, like slavery, holocaust, those big, massive events that have like swept the world, like it can be really good to talk about it and to be like I feel this way and I don't understand why. So do reach out for support through storytelling and sharing. There may be cultural and spiritual practices so you may want to come and have energy healing with me. We can look at breaking ancestral curses. Ancestral alliances and ancestral curses are different. Usually, ancestral curses are like a ancestor further back did something they weren't supposed to, consented to, a curse to curse the future generations of them, and then we look at breaking that, okay.

Speaker 1: 20:08

So, for example, if you kind of constantly find that there's a particular theme in your family, it may just either be a pattern repeated or it could be a spiritual curse which I wouldn't be able to tell until, like, I got in the room with you but, yeah, being able to come together in a spiritual practice and to honor your ancestors, to even have an ancestor altar where you say thank you for looking after me, because if you're spiritual, you're not spiritual. Your ancestors are always on the other side looking at what's best for you. So they are always there for you, darling, they are always looking for you, ok, and you know there may be a part of you where you're like right, I just really want to address some systemic issues that perpetuate this trauma. So you may find that you want to go into more social justice and advocacy, to feel like you're having an impact, to not only impact on you, your life, your family, but also in, like, a wider community sector. So you might want to promote, like, equity, equality, justice and, just you know, help to advocate for healing in those affected communities. That might not be for everyone, but there might be that little go-getter of being like I really want to push myself out my comfort zone and do this. So I'm going to wrap it up now, because otherwise I will be here forever and I feel like I fucking overwhelmed everybody with everything in this episode today.

Speaker 1: 21:31

So, as we wrap up today's episode. I hope this exploration of ancestral trauma has provided you with a deep understanding about how we can shape the present and the future, how, hopefully, you have comfort knowing that just because your family identity says a story doesn't have to be your fucking story. Okay, you get to be the narrative. You get to rewrite the narrative at any time that you want in your life. Okay, it's about recognizing that ancestral healing is a journey and it's about looking at the root pain of our significant trauma that has happened in our family line and breaking free from the cycles behind that.

Speaker 1: 22:08

Okay, so I'm gonna leave it there. Thank you so so very much for joining me today. I hope that was insightful and, yeah, if it was something that really resonated with you, then please let me know. I'm always wanting to hear from you, so send me an email, slide into my dms and also, of course, subscribe, leave a review for the podcast. Literally light me up. Come on, gas me up, and if you don't, tell me why you didn't like the podcast, with your full chest and I'll try and do better. Until then, I'm going to leave you. I'm going to love you, I'm going to leave you and I will see you next week. Bye, darling.