Inherited Memory

I was barely eleven, waiting for the tram with my friend Ulli.  Someone walked up behind me, reaching over my satchel.  Intense pain sizzled from a spot on the back of neck.  I jerked around.  Torsten grinned, as he tossed his cigarette butt to the ground.  I registered the sprouting facial hair on his chin - he was in my class but had been held back at least twice.  Ulli screamed at him, but I just clenched my jaws.  My only goal to not react, not give him the satisfaction of seeing the pain he’d caused.  Ulli kept yelling at him as she pulled me toward the slowing tram.  Then she turned to me: “Why didn’t you say anything?”  

Over the years I often wondered why my automatic response is not fight or flight, but freeze.   Was it the repeated border crossings when I was still an infant - watching my mother pretending to be meek while the guards treated her like she was subhuman?  Or does it go farther back?  

Last year, I came across this article:  Memories pass between generations. Recent work in the field of epigenetics shows that genes can be altered by trauma and those altered genes modify the behavior in offspring.

It felt like a revelation and confirmation.  Memory transmitted between generations.  Perhaps now I could stop blaming myself for shutting down like a frightened rabbit whenever anyone in uniform challenged me.  Maybe my fears and anxieties aren’t a defect of character, as I’ve always believed.  

Shortly after “Dreaming in German” was published, I received an email from Michael Reddy, a healer, coach and shaman.  He had come across the book on Amazon and wanted to know if it  might be useful in his work with family constellation therapy.  Here’s an excerpt: “I’'m wondering if you know about family constellations--which came out of Germany originally?  Individual trauma, if it is serious enough affects the families of ancestors as well as the individual, can lodge in the higher level family system (or family soul), where it stays until some descendent lives out something similar.  It's like the unresolved in the family soul resurfaces.  This is a chance to heal it, but few people understand that.  Family constellations are a tool for revealing and clearing these kinds of systemic traumas.  The US is the laggard in this kind of work, while it is growing very quickly around the world.”

We traded pdf’s of our books. His is titled Health, Happiness, and Family Constellations - How Ancestors, Family Systems, and Hidden Loyalties Shape Your Life - and What You Can Do About It. I found it fascinating reading.  Bert Hellinger, who developed this work, was born in Germany in 1925, the same year as my father.  He served in the German Army, became a prisoner of war ( though in Belgium, not the US). After the war, he became a Catholic Priest and spent 16 years as a missionary living with the Zulu in South Africa. The connection with ancestors ( a central feature in Zulu beliefs) is critical to family constellations theory.  Hellinger is not without his flaws, yet the central ideas of family constellations therapy resonated with me.  The basic premise, as I understand it, is that people experiencing trauma are frequently in survival mode and cannot process their experience, so they shut down and keep functioning.  This leaves their unresolved trauma for their children and grandchildren to resolve or relive.

My Father (front and center) as a POW