GENEALOGY WITH A PURPOSE
Discovering Trauma in My Family’s Past Inspires Me to Change the Future
How ancestral patterns can empower us to weave a better tapestry.
My grandmother Theresa was a rough-around-the-edges, call-it-like-she-sees-it kind of woman. She didn’t care about the consequences of her words, and never thought about how the receiver might feel. A toddler with a load in their diaper was “nasty.” Asian people were lumped together as “Chinese” (something my Japanese former brother-in-law learned to tolerate). And if someone made a mistake, what should have remained a “thought bubble” got spoken aloud by Teresa for everyone to hear.
When I was a young adult, my great-aunt (the sister-in-law of my grandmother) once told me that her entire family didn’t understand why my grandfather married my grandmother. Apparently, people didn’t like Theresa very much.
But my grandmother never sensed (or perhaps didn’t care about) the unspoken bitterness aimed her way. Still, she loved her family fiercely. And I felt that love — along with her harshness — which was confusing for a kid.
