Something life defining and deeply intimate is over. The child speaks what their parent could not. He or she recognizes how their own experience has been authored, how one has been authorized, if unconsciously, to carry their parents’ injury into the future. In rising above the remnants of one’s ancestors’ trauma, one helps to heal future generations. M. Gerard Fromm
Meditation: There is a phenomenon called “intergenerational trauma transmission”. In this experience the current generation inherits the fallout of their parent’s trauma, who in turn have inherited traumatic experiences from their parents. When trauma remains shamefully hidden, when it remains unspeakable, stays unresolved and speechless, it will surely be non-verbally transferred onto the next generation. This generation then takes it on and has to grapple with it on behalf of the former generations. Only when a current generation finally speaks the unspeakable and finds words for the trauma that happened generations before can the trauma repetition be broken. Although it often feels like a betrayal of the ancestors, it is not. It is actually the redemption of the ancestors. When the current generation speaks the unspeakable, reveals the truth and names the shame of former generations, great freedom and health is born out of the current generation’s refusal to carry the injury and pain of its parents forward into the future. Jesus joined this trauma interruption when he was asked who had sinned so that a child was born blind. He vehemently opposed the idea of a “curse” being carried forward or sin becoming an illness that is being passed down generations. In healing the blind man, Jesus asserts symbolically that God wants to break any and all traumatic transmission processes that we unconsciously carry forward.
Prayer: God of new beginnings, we pray that You come into the trauma and shame of our families and into the secrecy behavior of our families. We pray that You give us courage to name that which got injured and traumatized in the generations before us, and therefore also within us. Help us to lay down the burdens we carry on behalf of our parents and grandparents. You want to heal all trauma within us by us naming it and moving it out of the shadows into Your healing light. God, You are the one breaking the intergenerational trauma curse. You set us and the next generation free. And we are grateful! Amen
He saw a man blind from birth, and His disciples asked Him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but this happened so that the works of God would be displayed in him.” John 9:2
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