Honor that Breaks Generational-Trauma Patterns

Part IV of a series exploring motherhood and how religious teachings have torn at the fabric of healthy mother/daughter relationships.

You can access Part I here: Let's Be Honest: Exploring Mother/Daughter Relationships
You can access Part II here: The Harm Caused by Honor Culture
You can access Part III here: Honoring Mothers with a Trauma-Sensitive Lens

Photo by Kyle Austin on Unsplash

I have chosen to conclude this series on Mother’s Day. Like many others, it is an emotionally complicated day. It has been seven years since I published a blog—Picking Roses and Cards—on Mother’s Day. It was written before I had fully processed the most painful aspects my mother-daughter story.

I find it remarkable that I understood so much, have not changed my thinking on those things, and yet had so far to go before I could heal the deepest levels of trauma. Healing is like a spiral that often goes back to the same traumatic events, but with a greater understanding of what occurred.

The blog begins with this story:

When I was a little girl, every Mother’s Day, my mother would go outside and pick a rose for each of us. She would choose red for me and white for her. I thought the white roses were the prettiest, but I understood it meant my mother was alive and hers was not. My grandmother died when my mother was in her early 20’s so I never met her. I wondered about her. I wondered if she was like my mother.

White roses are still my favorite.

I am often asked if I could have told my story, written books, etc. if my mother was still alive? I have to answer, “No, I could not have done this.” The goal needed to be healing, not to tell the story. That begs the question, “Could I have healed before she passed?” I believe that would have been much more possible—but difficult.

What this has taught me is that there are many who cannot tell the story in any public way, but still need to heal. While they cannot speak up—for many reasons—I can. I can be the voice for the daughters of the women who could not heal and passed the trauma on to the next generation. It is possible to stop generational trauma.

It is difficult to acknowledge the ways unhealed trauma impacts or impacted our mothering. It takes courage to own it. It also takes huge amounts of self-compassion to not get stuck there. As I began healing, I did not want my daughter to feel that she couldn’t heal or be honest about our story until I was dead. One way I honor my mother is by ending generational patterns that were embedded in her by trauma. I believe in who she was born to be and have compassion for how she was harmed.

The ultimate honor I give to my mother is the work that I do. The threads of my story permeate my work and writing. This is how God and I bring goodness out of a very tragic story that has impacted me every day of my life. This is how I send hope into the future.

• No one needs to suffer for a lifetime as a result of childhood trauma. Suffering in this way is the exact opposite of what God desires. The stigma surrounding seeking the support of mental health professionals kept both my mother and I from receiving help.

• My mother and almost every other woman has little girl inside of them holding a doll and dreaming of one day having a baby of her own. They imagine being a good mommy but often (for many reasons) do not have a good enough mother to learn from. (Note: It is OK to not want to have children!)

• The cultural silencing of my mother’s story about her childhood trauma did unimaginable damage and robbed her of relationships—specifically with me as her daughter. It also robbed me of understanding her at a level that might have brought healing to both of us before she passed.

• The pressure to be the example for the church added to her overwhelm. She needed supportive mentors! Instead she wore the mask of happy perfection that I see in almost every picture of her during the years when she raised me.

• The impact of Behaviorism on child rearing practices fed into her need for control. It was impossible for her to understand that she was the cause for my behaviors that were a communication of my unmet needs that she was unable to meet. Behavior is communication.

• Along with the emphasis on control, most parenting advice over the last century lacked understanding of the importance of attachment and co-regulation in building self-regulation and resilience. Many mothers missed attachment opportunities because of church/parenting instruction discouraged it.

It is my hope that on this Mother’s Day, there will be mothers who will begin to have the conversations with their children that will unravel all the ways that dogmatic teachings have blocked communication and pitted parent against child. Hopefully learning more about the impact of trauma will help us understand one another better.

Honor or respect that stops unhealthy generational patterns requires
carrying the weight of the truth bathed in trauma-informed grace.