I’ve told this story to a few people this week so perhaps it’s also worth sharing here. During the Holocaust, my maternal grandmother bribed a farmer to hide her in his potato cellar. When the money ran out, he evicted her. She wandered through the woods half-starved and came across a young boy. Scared he would alert others to her presence, she threatened him but she wasn’t all that intimidating as she looked bedraggled and emaciated.
After the incident, she slid into hopelessness and no longer cared whether she lived or died. She’d already suffered so much and couldn’t take anymore. She spotted an encampment and decided to walk into it whether it was the Nazis or not.
It wasn’t the Nazis, it was the Russians so she was saved. Growing up when I heard that story, I marveled at the “happy accident,” of my grandmother’s “luck.” But recently I started to reframe what happened. What if it wasn’t an accident? What if it was intentional? What if my grandma was led to safety by guardian angels or water spirits or her intuition or some other benevolent force?
Seen and unseen forces walk beside us. Photo by Jad Limcaco on Unsplash
My spiritual teacher says, “There is no such thing such as an accident – everything is an incident. When an action is materialized within a very short time, or when the root cause of the action is not known to us, we are just seeing the reaction, the incident. When the cause, the causal side of the incident is not known to us, or when the causal side is translated into action in a very short time, we say it is an accident. But actually, nothing is accidental, everything is incidental.”
What about car accidents? And stubbing your toe? The cause could be very simple – someone ran a red light. Or you weren’t looking where you were going. But also sometimes, the cause is deeper and more meaningful than that (I think). I’d like to believe my grandmother walked into a Russian camp because she was meant to live. It wasn’t her time to die yet, so no, it wasn’t an accident.
The reframe is asking me to consider the same about my own life. What if I’m also not alone and instead being led to safety in its myriad forms? It’s clear that I pay attention to divine guidance. I notice when bumblebees land on my window or doves perch on my railing. I listen to the inner stirrings of my gut. Paying attention to divine guidance is what this Passover is about for me, a holiday I’m currently celebrating.
Passover is about the escape from Egypt and as a modern-day Jew, I’m escaping from a metaphorical Egypt. The Hebrew word for Egypt is Mitzrayim, which also means tight spaces or narrow consciousness. This year the narrow consciousness I’m escaping from is the notion I’m wandering around all alone, lost in the woods. That help is out of reach and unavailable.
I’m recognizing I’m not all alone and neither was my grandmother, nor my great-grandmother, nor my great-great-grandmother all the way back to the time of Moses. I, too, am being led from a metaphorical Egypt to a safer, freer, promised land. Even if you’re not Jewish, maybe the same is true for you.
I dream of a world where we remember there are no coincidences, that instead there is always a cause for everything, even if we’re unaware of it. A world where we recognize we aren’t alone. A world where we remember benevolent beings are walking with us, guiding us where we need to go.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
Back in November, a friend told me, “There will always be an invitation to the fear party, but you can decline.” Lately, I’m reflecting on how not only is there a perennial invitation to the fear party, but also the grief party and the trauma party. There are endless opportunities for me to worry about X, to grieve about Y. Some of that is warranted, emotions show up for a reason, but some of it is needless suffering.
I’m reading a new book about intergenerational trauma and the author, Rabbi Tirzah Firestone, mentions that some people with trauma in their background have tremendous guilt that they didn’t do more to stop the terrible thing from happening. Like they should have fought back against an attacker, or run away, or whatever. I burst into tears when I read that because I’m quite familiar with second-guessing myself and playing “what if” games. Because of the trauma, a part of me also thinks if I’m hypervigilant enough, I can prevent something from happening. If I’m tracking all the sights, sounds, and other cues around me, then I’ll be safe.
This ties into family trauma because there is a part of me keeping watch for Nazis coming to get me. I’m on the lookout for threatening people and situations, which is an inheritance from my grandparents. They were deeply scarred from the Holocaust and as a sensitive descendent, I’m carrying that load. That means I carry fears that aren’t really mine because I don’t recognize I’m in this body, this life, this time.
This image came up when I searched for “support.” Photo by Neil Thomas on Unsplash
I had a scary, traumatic situation happen the other week that shook some things loose in my psyche. I don’t want to share the details online, but in broad strokes, my sense of safety was disrupted. I wasn’t in any actual danger but it felt like I was. To give you an idea, the police were involved. And because I was so scared, I called a friend in Australia because I knew she’d be awake as it was late in the evening California time. She asked me what would restore my feeling of safety and the answer was, “Not sleeping here tonight.” So I didn’t. I called another friend, stayed at her place, and then another friend offered her place for multiple nights if I needed it. During that time away, I met up with still more friends for a walk and dinner. In short, lots and lots of support showed up for me.
Now that the dust is settling, I’m processing the experience with my therapist but also noticing the hypervigilance hasn’t changed. In fact, it’s gotten worse because I’m not reminding myself of what actually happened or how I took care of myself. It’s important for me not to discount that when I needed help, it showed up immediately. I had people to talk to, places to go, and tools in my toolbox like qigong, EFT, yoga, meditation, journaling, etc. In other words, I did not and am not experiencing what my grandparents did, which was a hard scrabble to survive using only their wits.
Instead, I have choices. I have options. Yes, we’re experiencing a surge in antisemitism along with so many other attacks on minorities, but I have friends all over the world who would gladly take me in if I needed shelter. I have a global community that my grandparents did not have. In other words, what happened to them won’t happen to me.
There will always be an invitation to the trauma party but I can decline. I don’t have to reenact or hold on to family patterns because I can instead embody myself in this time in this world in this situation. I’m not powerless, I’m not helpless. The world will always have threats, that doesn’t change, but I’ve changed. I’m different and that’s something I can hold on to and maybe the same is true for you.
I dream of a world where we take the gifts and lessons from the past and then move forward into the future. A world where we understand we don’t have to keep opening old wounds. A world where we remember we have choices and take comfort in our own self-empowerment. A world where we recognize the environment around us may stay the same but we can change and that makes all the difference.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.
I had an interesting experience this week. A friend posted this article about how family trauma can be inherited. I’d heard of the concept before, especially when epigenetics came to the scene, but I didn’t think the issues I’m addressing right now could be related. I thought epigenetics made me more prone to overreact to stress because my ancestors experienced stressful situations. Stuff like that. However, reading that article had me rethink some things.
One of the issues that’s plagued me for a long time is a fear I’ll be replaced, usurped, or forgotten. I attributed it to being a middle child, but this week I contemplated whether the issue was rooted in my ancestral lineage. Before World War II, both of my grandparents were married to other people and had families, all of whom were killed. By the time my grandparents married each other, in a way, their previous families were replaced, by the living.
This picture! How perfect.
My mother has shown me a family portrait taken before the war – a whole gaggle of people – and then she points to a few people and says, “These are the only ones who survived.” I have no idea who the rest of my relations are, I don’t know their names, or their stories. They have been forgotten. Even typing this right now I’m tearing up because I feel the grief around that, these lost family members.
I started meditating after reading the article about inherited family trauma, and I said to all of my ancestors, “I’m inviting you back into the family. I’m acknowledging you. You have a place. You are not forgotten and your role will not be usurped.” Afterward, I became frenzied and manic. Energy buzzed through me and hours later after I calmed down, I felt relief in way that I haven’t before. Instead of feeling insecure, worrying that I’ll be replaced by someone else, I felt an assurance that I am irreplaceable.
I am fascinated by the whole thing because so often I think of myself living in a vacuum – my issues started with me and that’s the end of it – but this experience has me thinking perhaps that’s not true. My spiritual teacher says we are affected by our environments and by external sources. Not just in the sense of, “It’s cold outside and that makes me cold,” but “I live with drug dealers so I’m more likely to deal drugs myself.” We all know this, don’t we? It makes complete sense, but it didn’t occur to me until the other day that the effects of someone else’s actions who I’ve never met, who I don’t know anything about, could be impacting me today. Not in terms of government policies, but personal traumas like being locked up in a mental institution or losing a child.
The good news is this stuff can be healed. Mark Wolynn, who wrote a book called It Didn’t Start With You, says:
“On a higher level, I believe these traumas are important, because they lead us on a hero’s journey. We enter the path through introspection, through looking at what’s uncomfortable, by being able to tolerate what’s uncomfortable, and then by journeying in to what’s uncomfortable and emerging on the other side in a more expansive place, using what was contracting us as the source of our expansion. Many of us don’t realize that the trauma we are born to heal is also the seed of our expansion.”
I dream of a world where we delve into what’s uncomfortable. A world where we understand our issues are not ours alone and may have a root in what happened to our ancestors. A world where we understand we all have carryovers from the past and we finally put the baggage down.
Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.