Wounded and healed by family
No matter who I see in therapy, whether it be a couple, a young child, an adult, or an adolescent, I am working with the family. That’s because as human beings, we belong to an invisible web of people- mother, father, sibling, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins. Those alive and here with us, and those long gone who came before us. Whether we feel it or not, we never exist alone. Neither do our problems and challenges. Everything we say, think, feel, wonder about, and need always connect us back to this invisible web always with us.
For some of us this invisible web brings us great joy and pride. We can recall many experiences of connection, nurture, and love. For some of us this invisible web brings us deep sadness, longing, frustration, regret, fear, humiliation, and even anger. And for some of us this invisible web is unknown to us.
An important part of healing is to better understand the invisible web that we belong to and how this web impacts us, for better or for worse. When we fail to do this important work we end up suffering greatly and the generations that follow us suffer too. Fr. Richard Rohr said it best when he wrote, “The pain we do not transform, we transmit.” We are called to transform our pain and that is best executed by understanding the origins of it in the context of our family of origin.
I remember in graduate school we were assigned a homework assignment that required us to better understand our family. The assignment was to interview different family members and create a genogram with the information provided. A Genogram is a pictorial representation of a family’s history. Within the field of mental health, it is designed to help people explore different patterns, dysfunctions, medical history, mental health history, and other psychological factors in their family tree.
When doing this assignment I realized that my family was saturated with divorce. On both sides of my family there were generations of marriages that did not last and even re-marriages that did not last. The wound of divorce plagues my family and whether my parents, grandparents and great grandparents realize it or not, it still affects them. It did not matter if my grandparents and great-grandparents were happily re-married, or my mother married my step-dad (who I call dad), the wound has been infecting each generation, down to even myself.
I experienced this infection more directly during my first year of marriage. This was the most challenging year for my husband and I. My husband also comes from generations of divorce and has never seen what a healthy marriage looks like. When my husband and I were faced with the difficulties that marriage surely brings, our first gut reaction was to quit. The wounds of our past and the brokenness in our invisible webs were corroding our marriage. Unfortunately our story and our struggle is not unique.
I see generational trauma and unhealed family wounds affect so many people in a very similar way all the time in my work with individuals, couples, and even children. The invisible web is always there affecting each of us deeply, even when we are not fully conscious of it.
When we do become aware of our wounds and what is unhealed in our families, the temptation is to try to fix it all by ourselves. We read books about difficult family dynamics, we journal about our feelings, or we might even try really hard to change unhealthy patterns of behaviors that we see in ourselves in the hopes to “never be like mom or dad.” Although reading books, journaling and changing unhealthy patterns of behavior can be very helpful, the problem is that the focus is on the self and the healing is done in isolation. True and lasting healing is never done alone. Although many of our wounds and pain are created by family, the irony is family also has the power to heal many of those wounds and pain. We were created for family, for better or for worse, and family will save us.
That is why God comes to us in three distinct persons- Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In this divine family we see how the perfect love and unity between father and son create the holy spirit and the gifts of the holy spirit is what makes human families holy and beautiful.
We see this in the Holy Family with Mary, Joseph and Jesus. The Holy Family is the perfect human example of how the holy spirit has the power to transform family life and truly make it holy. Pope Benedict XVI said,
“God wished to reveal Himself by being born in a human family, and hence the human family has become an icon of God . . . The human family is, in a certain sense, the icon of the Trinity because of the love between its members and the fruitfulness of that love."
With self-giving love between each member of the human family, there is no divorce, abuse, abandonment, neglect, inattentiveness, just love, obedience, connection, safety, and fidelity the way God intended.
We are called to model our own human families after the Holy Family and the Holy Trinity. It is not easy, especially if there is a lot of dysfunction and unhealed wounds but the good news is God never leaves us alone with whatever dysfunction and pain we and our family hold. He comes to meet us in our invisible webs and offer us everything we need to heal- whether it be the resources needed to change our families of origin, the opportunity to create a new family, the gift of friends and communities that become family, the Holy Family, or His very self through the Blessed Trinity.
Therefore, when we recognize the invisible web we exist in and seek healing through and with family, we can live the lives God intended for us. We can live lives of love, obedience, connection, safety, and fidelity. We can live lives that not only positively impact our invisible web but the invisible web of being connected to the world.
So my hope for you is that you get to know your invisible web and be honest about how your family has shaped you. I hope you also refrain from letting the dysfunction and wounds you uncover bring despair. Look to the family God offers you to heal what is broken in your family. Whether it be the Holy Spirit, the family of the church, the holy family, or a group of friends, let these families point you to what is needed for your health and well-being, so that you can receive all that you have been created for and be healed by family.
If you are interested in creating your own Genogram use the information provided here.
God did not create a human family made up of segregated, dissociated, mutually independent members. No, He would have them all united by the bond of total love of Him and consequent self-dedication to assisting each other to maintain that bond intact.”
Venerable Pope Pius XII