On summertime sadness and exploring genetic memories
august slipped away into a moment of time!!!
Hi friends,
Long time no see.
I haven’t shared much in what seems like forever. Mostly due to the cadence of my busy life but also because for a while I have felt like I have too much to say that is too raw and the publicity of a platform like this one propelled me into a never-ending cycle of fear of scrutiny. It is difficult to overcome the fear of being seen, especially when people are constantly making you aware of the fact that you are indeed being watched :D.
But — like Anne Lamott reminds us in her book “Bird by Bird” :
“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.”
―Anne Lamott
I have been running to my drafts and writing pad for the last several months, almost always failing to have the courage needed to share my work. After witnessing this ordeal for long enough, my husband gifted me Lamott’s book — which is probably a book I would recommend to any aspiring writer now. Lamott shares that getting started is always the hardest part of writing, but she also notes that good writing is about “telling the truth”. And telling the truth requires vulnerability, putting yourself out there no matter the consequence. Writing is ingrained into our human nature, our species will always seek to express and make an understanding of its experiences. I believe that the more I prioritize my audience over the actual relief, community, healing, and growth that writing has brought me, the more I lose control over my self-narrative. And yet, here I am, taking the scary jump I’ve been putting off for months and trying again…..
This summer I couldn’t help but spend my most of my days pondering on my gruesome journey untangling the loads of trauma I’ve inherited from my family of origin. Sometimes there is something deep in your soul that rings, and your body sends you an alarm signal saying “you need to work on this.” As I’ve entered a variety of new stages in my life while simultaneously navigating what it means to do these things without the security and stability the average healthy person needs to function (in a psychological sense), I am but left to gnawing at the roots of where my suffering comes from.
In the last few years, a few concepts have become more mainstream as pop-culture psychology trends bring us terms like “breaking the cycle” and “generational trauma” — which I will admit can have more positive repercussions than negative ones if we are careful to not pathologize these terminologies …. because knowledge and awareness are the first steps to self-discovery and healing. But how do we get there? How do we actually work through the trauma we’ve inherited or that has been passed down to us? I don’t have the answer but I will say my summer has been entirely consumed within an infinite loop of exploring these symptoms and feelings. The reason is that I think as I grow older, and become more grounded in my sense of self (which in part is because secure relationships are incredibly healing and eye-opening and I am incredible grateful to be in one), I am cognizant of the fact that I need to deal with my own crap and *try* and make sure my children don’t experience nor ever face what I had to deal with. Do I wish my parents, and their parents, did the same? Do I wish I had inherited more safety, love, and security instead of trauma? Sure. But this doesn’t mean that I can’t put in the work or resolve what has been left unresolved for so long. It also doesn’t mean I can’t make space for the intergenerational grief and loss that is so prevalent in the family systems I come from and what has ensued due to war, famine, displacement, etc. which have played large roles in embedding this trauma into our history. I think that often times people mistakenly interpret breaking generational trauma as a reason to go on a witch hunt against their parents but that really isn’t what I am describing or alluding to here.
I feel like true healing (for me at least) can only come from a transformative form of acceptance of the past, and the double realities at play — such as the understanding that my parents tried their best with what little they had, and what little was given to them. It’s like that saying that goes all like “it’s your parents first time living too” which prompts me to have empathy for them even as I navigate my feelings in this journey.
I am trying to practice radical self-awareness and what it means to end the cycle of projection, too. I believe so much of the “difficulty” I faced in my adolescence was because the caregivers in my life were not looking within for answers, rather, the younger and more vulnerable figures like myself were objects for projection.
I briefly remember watching a clip of one of Dr. Gabor Mate’s speaking events where an attendee who was expecting her first child, asks him “What can I do to ensure I don’t pass on my traumas to my child and be the best version of myself for them? I am petrified of the potential of me being a bad parent.”Dr. Mate responds, telling her she isn’t petrified of the future, she is “petrified of the past”. Whew. He then asks her at what age her parents took on the job of getting to “know themselves”, to which the attendee lets him know she is in her mid-30s and feels like “they are just now starting”. Dr. Mate then asks the attendee “What would it have meant for you if your parents asked themselves the question you just asked me, before they had you? You have already given that gift to your unborn children.”
This talk titled “Stopping the Transfer of Trauma” gave me goosebumps. Mainly because he is so right, it takes so little but very intentional effort to exercise just enough introspection to deal with our emotional wounds to ensure we cultivate safe and loving environments for all of the little and innocent souls in these intimate spheres of our lives. But like Dr. Gabor Mate reminded that young woman in the audience, I too want to give this gift to my unborn children. The gift and wealth of emotional safety and well-being. I use the word “wealth” here because I believe the truest form of wealth is an abundant amount of love and compassion in one’s life, the absence of that cannot be replaced with anything of material value.
I recently watched this Turkish show, Zeytin Ağacı, which is about a group of girlfriends who undertake a spontaneous journey of healing due to one of their friend’s (Sevgi) cancer diagnosis. The other two friends are named Leyla and Ada. They come across an advertisement for a family constellation therapy program located in the coastal city of Ayvalik, led by a man named Dr. Zaman. They embark on this trip to Ayvalik together to partake in this program, to which they all discover that 1) most of their current life situations can be traced back to unhealed and unaddressed general wounds (the show heavily leaned on theories of epigenetics), and that 2) in order to overcome the current cycles of trauma they were undergoing, they needed to confront the multiple generations of trauma stored in their family histories. Interestingly enough, Dr. Zaman helped the three women explore these deep ancestral wounds that were holding them back in several ways — including Sevgi’s battle with cancer. Her cancer eventually subsided, probably due to the decrease in inflammation and increased quality of life she was experiencing in Ayvalik. I have to admit I was completely enamored with the show’s well-written plot as each episode unveiled a new ancestral memory stored in the familial history of these girls, and even other people in their lives like their spouses and parents. It prompted me to think more consciously about the ways I have been wired by my own ancestral wounds. When I feel triggered, what am I actually responding to? Is it the deeply embedded pain of displacement, neglect, misogyny, etc., that has been so ingrained and coded into my genetics? I’m not sure. The point is that the stress and trauma that your ancestors experience can potentially cause some level of inherited epigenetics, meaning that the genes aren’t actually altered in sequence but rather these experiences are so significant that they can impact how genes are expressed down the line.
In the second season, Ada, the friend who is also happens to be a doctor, is penalized and eventually terminated from the hospital she works at for recommending family constellation therapy to a patient and ends up conducting research to discover a more holistic and applicable understanding of concepts of generational trauma that could be used in the field of medicine. Throughout the show, they cited conclusions from the well-known book “It Didn’t Start With You” by Mark Wolynn, another classic contribution to the study of generational trauma that highlights the importance of “tracing the source” of personal trauma that is inherited.
I’ve been pretty transparent and vulnerable on here about how I’ve been grappling with chronic illnesses and the side effects of high cortisol that we often see manifest as fatigue, migraines, gastrointestinal malfunctions, anxiety, etc. and it has all been super detrimental for me, but also incredibly revealing about the messages my body has been trying to send me. Inspired by Zeytin Agaci, I’ve been trying to “trace the source” and identify the root cause of my pains in the last few years, especially since it had gotten worse since I left my family home, city, and entered an entirely new world.
What has prompted me to begin trying to understand the true essence of my trauma is that I really want to be intentional about how I show up in the world, and more importantly… how I show up for myself. Going through so much transition in the last few years has meant that there have been a plethora of new dynamics and characters in my life and that hasn’t always resulted in a positive outcome for me. And because I’ve been conditioned to abandon myself, my needs, feelings, etc. from so young, I was was only reiterating this cycle in my adult life. I’ve come to know so many people who have treated my heart harshly, with lack of care, delicacy, and consideration, and this has left me constantly feeling triggered, disempowered, or invisible in what seems like a never-ending sequence. What I want more than anything now, as I am putting in the work to untangle inherited trauma, is to understand why self-neglect comes much easier to me than self-compassion. When there are voices in your life consistently trying to convince you that you deserve less, or that you aren’t good enough, you will need a certain level of belief within yourself to know what you are no longer willing to endure being treated so insignificantly. I’ve felt like often times I’ve failed at taking a stand for myself and I want to change that. I want to know what it feels like for self-respect to come as second nature to me, and not something I regret lacking later on in my life. Being so conditioned to be dutiful and complacent in your own suffering is so deeply ingrained in the cultural expectations for women, especially in the community I was brought up in, and my own family structure… but I am finally learning that it isn't my responsibility to sacrifice my own integrity just to make others more ”comfortable” — which is a burden always expected of disenfranchised folks to carry. I also know that I am not alone in my experiences, so many of my friends that I talk to about this, mostly black women, are going through the same things. I sometimes think a lot of my melancholy is embedded in the fact that I am subconsciously grieving the person I thought I would be, or maybe the life I thought I would have (or did not have). And that’s why writing here is so important to me, because vulnerability is power not only for me but for those who read me too. I love when I get messages from other readers telling me how much something I’ve shared here has made them feel seen. James Baldwin famously says “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive”. Of course this is no book, but it is a forum, a shared space that transcends geographical constraints on this vast and untamed beast of a universe called the internet. I think there is some strength to be found in that and I hope I can continue sharing bits and pieces, for you and for myself — I will be back soon 💌 .
Thank you so much for sharing this, Iman. I’ve never resonated with something more. It is a long, exhausting but, eventually, rewarding process to ‘trace the roots’ of your behaviour, your triggers or even your physical health. May Allah make introspection and the journey to emotional clarity easy for us, ameen. 🫶🏽
Iman, this was a beautiful, emotional, validating read 🥹 I’ve been on a similar journey all summer and it can be so difficult, especially (I’ve found) when consuming a lot of media that DOES pathologize trauma. I especially felt seen with the part of not necessarily needing to go on a witch hunt after your parents but accepting that they gave you what they could. I recently listened to a podcast where this guy mentioned how we’re the CEO’s of our lives - how although it’s true that not everything that happens to us is our fault, it is our responsibility to decide to be proactive and resolve it within us because nobody is coming to save us, and our experiences impact the way we show up in the world, but especially how we show up for ourselves. Also! I loved the show another self, just binge watched the second season haha. Thank you for sharing this 🤍