Transgenerational Trauma Shaping History: The Power of Images
My father, Sol, was a Jew from Brooklyn who served in the U.S. Army Air Corps when he met my mother Kate, who had fled Nazi Germany on the Kindertransport. They met at a synagogue gathering in Detroit and married shortly thereafter. Their first years of marriage were largely spent apart, my father being deployed […]
Easing Trauma’s Polarizing Impact With The Power Of Vulnerability: Practical Tools For Reaching Out To The Hostile Other
Many of us carry the fantasy that, in our next disagreement with someone from “the other side,” we will drive home our truth, we’ll be so sharp and will raise such powerful points, that the other will drop to his knees, tears in his eyes, and declare, “You’re so right, I am so wrong, how […]
Superhero
https://youtu.be/le2HSDpD-Aw VERSE 1: I always wanted a red cape on my back I always wanted to best in my pack I always wanted to be known to be good To be the hero of my own hood If I could just fly, I could save everyone Stop all the wars, so nobody’s gotta run All […]
War And Flight Leave Traces In The Body Memory Of Refugees
The Invitation
What if we could go back in time? Think of all the pain we could unwind We could change the course of history Like a sculptor reshaping destiny Imagine the wars we’d unfight And all of the wrongs we would right We would design a different life And all the broken-hearted would unite To live, […]
White Supremacy, Overcoming A Legacy Of Cognitive Dissonance And Unresolved Trauma
Abstract:This article aims to identify and understand how radicalized behavior, being a by-product of white supremacy is inculcated in individuals through continued cognitive dissonance and unresolved trauma. The avoidance of confronting uncomfortable emotions that comes with discussing this nation’s racialized history is symptomatic of an internal impairment. Subsequently, the legacy of a nation steeped in […]
Tension Between Forces of the Past and Yearnings for the Future
Myriam, Lebanon, 1993
The first word my youngest brother said was rifle. This was during the opening siege of the civil war. Every sect was fighting every other sect, neighbor against neighbor, tales of rival factionsand broken promises, lists of mysterious acronymsscrolling on the news. The boy who once coaxed me to the rooftopto lie in his arms […]
An Inter-Generational Story At The Fall Of The Ottoman Empire
Excerpt From: “Historical Traumas Among Armenian, Kurdish, and Turkish People Of Anatolia: A Transdisciplinary Perspective Toward Reconciliation” Published by Sussex Academic Press in January 2022, Nermin Soyalp’s Historical Traumas is a transdisciplinary academic research book. Based on decade-long doctorate research, the author reviews the deep wounds that exist from long-standing conflicts between Turks, Kurds, and […]
Transgenerational Trauma Effects: The Role of Epigenetics
There is a solid body of literature documenting and characterizing the effects of traumas of one generation upon their children or even subsequent generations (Danieli, 1998). However, physiological mechanisms are not usually discussed, even for the first generation, and later generation effects are assumed to be transmitted through parental behavior. A new field of biological […]
Refugee
Aftermath
(Spoken word poetry written while returning from aid work to Syrian refugees in Jordan – reflections from a conversation with a child describing their drawing of their bombed-out neighborhood as “a place with pieces of people on the ground.” ) When you’re in pieces on the ground, it doesn’t matter that the missile was blue, […]
Different Kinds of Transgenerational Trauma: Healing Old “Psychic Wounds” Through Psychotherapy
Abstract:This article looks at an overview of the concept of ‘transgenerational trauma’ – a phenomenon whereby the trauma that has occurred in one generation is ‘transmitted’ to another generation, and even another beyond that. This phenomenon occurs on a psychic level (often described as a ‘complex post-traumatic stress disorder’ mechanisms; or a ‘secondary traumatisation’), as […]
Healing Trauma Across Fourteen Generations
Everything we do will affect seven generations is a saying known and understood by many Indigenous people of the world. The understanding of the impact on seven generations includes the ancestors as well as the unborn ones. Therefore, the act of writing these words are already having an impact on at least fourteen generations. This […]
Place, Historical Trauma, and Indigenous Wisdom
“Place is the first of all beings, since everything that exists is in a place and cannot exist without a place.” – Archytas, as cited by Simplicius, Commentary on Aristotle’s Categories. “To know who you are, you have to have a place to come from.” – Carson McCullen, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Largely […]
Healing Trauma in War Torn Countries
testing exerpt