Generational Grief: Breaking Free from What Was Never Ours to Carry
A personal journey through inherited trauma and the path to healing
There are moments when you realize the weight you’ve been carrying isn’t entirely yours. For me, one such moment came while reading a passage in Strengthening My Recovery about something called “generational grief.” The words hit me like lightning—sudden, illuminating, and impossible to ignore.
The passage asked: “What did I receive from my dysfunctional family and what would I have received from loving parents in the same situation?”
I sat there, book in hand, feeling like I was staring into a mirror that reflected not just my face, but the faces of generations before me.
The Inheritance I Never Asked For
My story begins before my first breath. Both of my parents were Holocaust survivors—two souls who somehow found each other after losing parts of their families to one of history’s darkest chapters. They survived the unimaginable loss. But survival, as I’ve learned, is far from healing.
Then, just months before I was born, they experienced another devastating blow: the loss of their firstborn son. By the time I entered the world, the air I breathed was already thick with grief, absence, and pain that had no words.
When Science Meets Soul: Understanding Epigenetic Trauma
Mark Wolynn’s groundbreaking work in It Didn’t Start with You reveals something profound: trauma doesn’t just live in our memories—it lives in our bodies. Epigenetic research shows us that the stress, fear, and unprocessed grief of one generation can actually alter gene expression, passing down invisible wounds to children and grandchildren.
This isn’t just a scientific theory for me. It’s my lived reality.
As trauma expert Dr. Gabor Maté explains, “Trauma is not what happens to you, it is what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you.” For those of us carrying generational grief, that internal landscape was shaped before we could even speak.
👉 Learn how trauma can literally alter genes and pass from parents to children through biology, not just behavior. Discover this groundbreaking research: How Parents’ Trauma Leaves Biological Traces in Children, by Professor Rachel Yehuda
The Weight of Unprocessed Sorrow
Growing up, I couldn’t name what I felt. I only knew I was swimming in undercurrents that seemed too deep, too ancient to be mine alone. My parents loved me fiercely—that was never in question. But their ability to provide consistent emotional safety was compromised by wounds that ran soul-deep.
The Strengthening My Recovery passage describes this perfectly: unprocessed grief from our childhoods and our ancestors’ childhoods can put us in “a perpetual state of mourning.” This grief becomes what experts call “complicated grief”—sorrow that holds us hostage, undermining our ability to function and form healthy relationships.
The grief brings friends: shame, depression, insecurity. Together, they create what I now recognize as a “great prescription for being unhealthy.”
👉 Learn more about trauma recovery and healing in Holocaust Memory Through Art
Breaking the Chains: The Path to Freedom
But here’s what changed everything for me: recognizing that generational grief isn’t a life sentence—it’s an invitation to heal.
The Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA) approach taught me to:
- Uncover the roots of my grief
- Recognize what I didn’t receive as a child
- See how I learned to react as a result
- Stop the grief cycle before it reaches future generations
This work isn’t just about understanding the past; it’s about reclaiming your present and reshaping your future.