Across the Sky

Grappling with Generational Trauma

I have a theory.

Preverbal trauma has effected who I am, and continues to affect generations.

I saw another adoptee post recently with a similar theory.

Epigenetics theory shows us that trauma can turn on traits.

We have the potential to be: _________________ fill in the blank

And it can be turned on or off by environmental factors, exposure to chemicals that overwhelm the system, making things designed to work a certain way and protect us instead make our own bodies turn against us.

Our mother’s experience during pregnancy? Not fitting in our entire life?

What is cancer but that, our bodies replicating wrong cells?

I carry a disproportionate amount of fat around my abdomen, so does my biological mother, and my daughter. How much of this was caused by the cortisol?

The fellow adoptee theory I saw last week was females with longer ring finger than pointer finger, which is more rare in females, and she speculated it is tied to testosterone in utero. I have it. There sure was a lot of sharing on the Adoptee group page sharing their photos too.

Just like a cat with that hanging belly, that portends early life trauma. I’ve seen it in family cats, including my daughter’s 10 year old cat Annie. She was the cat who was found in a gutter and not nursed to 9 weeks. Their other cat had no signs of that.

So my theory is, those of us not bonded as infants, not held by our mothers – and that is my birth mom and me – most of us were kept for 10 weeks in foster care.

Did you know that?

The state of New Mexico had me in a foster care situation for 10 weeks in downtown Las Cruces as an infant. From my research, I was there with six other infants, so I’m sure there was not enough foster care givers to hold me while I had that bottle. That bottle was propped, I didn’t form a strong bond with someone feeding me in that most vulnerable stage of development, and I have felt myself, just myself, all of my life.

My literal life theme: No one is coming. You must handle it yourself.

From a Google search:

“The idea that "only you can know you exist" is a concept often associated with Solipsism, a philosophical view suggesting that only one's own mind is sure to exist, and that everything else is a representation within that mind. While you are directly aware of your own consciousness and thoughts, the existence of other minds is inferred through indirect means and observations of behavior.”

Biomom’s husband was into hypnosis. He was also an adoptee, also born on Christmas Eve.

He hypnotized her back to her birth and early weeks, and the complete breakdown she had crying jags alone in the crib and no one coming scared him so much he wouldn’t hypnotize her again in that area.

I took the 20-week course and became a certified hypnotherapist too, in the mid 90’s. Some aspects that I saw there gave me pause enough to not want the karma that could be accumulated by messing around in people’s unconscious.

I also can NOT be hypnotized myself, not really, not all the way under.

I can meditate myself into a pretty relaxed state, I can sense my higher-self connected to All That Is, the white blank room if you will, but another of my theories, there’s something back there I don’t want to open up.

I am the queen of compartmentalization.

When I read Primal Wound, I could feel that terror back there. Preverbal, and the realization that no one is coming, no one has soothed me yet. Not really.

I used to think my hyper-awareness was my intelligence. I’m not so sure anymore. But I’m listening to 5 things at a time, and am aware that part of me is above looking at the whole, the big picture.

Yeah I’m weird. I’m OK with that. Woo.

So does Exodus 34:7 refer to this?

"keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation."

I embrace the concept of self-responsibility, that I am not cursed by the generations before, but that doesn’t mean there are not consequences on the physical plane.

My current focus is to heal the generations forward with love.

Please, oh please, let the generational trauma be broken in my grandchildren. Amen

Thanks for coming - Dovel