Generational Healing (even when it's messy)

One of the things I love, love about this community, is how thoughtful and how kind you are to me, to each other. This Dare Greatly community is special. We are women who are committed to overcoming the hard things life hands us, and to grow from them, learn from them, and find beauty for ashes.

As some of you know, this summer got particularly hard, my cute dad recently passed away. And it happened quite fast, once it happened. He went in for an outpatient surgery, and was gone a week later. He had a series of domino events happen in the hospital that were just too hard to overcome in combination, and I’m so grateful we had that week with him to say our goodbyes and watch the hallmark channel with him, those Christmas in July shows with him, which are his favorite. 

My dad is a lover of all things Christmas, he even played Santa Clause over the years. Who can actually say in real life they had Santa Clause for a dad? That’s what me and all of my siblings can say. It takes a special man to play Santa Clause. 

But many of you also know that I had a difficult childhood. And I get questions all the time about that. Many of you are curious about it. And so I thought I would share some of my story with you today because of the questions you’ve been asking. And I also want to share with you some of the things from the talk I gave at my father’s funeral. I thought you might want to hear that because it gives you a lot of insight into how the good can outweigh the bad when you look for it and when you let it and what generational healing can look like even if it’s messy. 

And so some of you are wondering who I mean when I say my dad, because my biological dad is not in my story, he was an avid skier at the time I was born, he helped pioneer the sport of Freestyle skiing, he is a fun-loving, great guy, but he chose not to be in the picture when I was a baby. When my mom had me, she found my biological dad had been unfaithful and she left him. 

And so My dad who raised me is really my biological uncle. I first remember him as Uncun Gary, since I couldn’t say my L’s when I was a little girl. He adopted me when my mom died when I was three. He loved my mom Maryjo dearly, she was his only sister, she was only 23 at the time, and I was her only child. And my dad always wanted to do right by raising me so he could someday say to my angel mom, his sister, “I did my very best.” 

There are times when I gave him a run for his money on that. 

My mom, his sister, had a headstrong streak. She could be stubborn. My dad saw this in me as a little girl. And so my dad would say to me growing up….

“You are just like your mother!” He would say that to me a lot.

Sometimes he’d say it with exasperation. Sometimes with affection and warmth and tears in his eyes. Sometimes with consternation. But always with a lot of love. 

Just to illustrate this, One of my favorite stories of my mom Maryjo is when she and her mom, Fern, who doesn’t love the name Fern?! Can we please bring that back? But they got in some sort of fight, Mary was a teenager in high school while they lived in New York on Long Island - and she decided she’d had enough and took off down the long driveway with my grandma Fern chasing her in her bra and underwear - which if you knew my grandma Fern, that must have been quite a sight! And the way grandma Fern described it, Maryjo just kept going and going even though she knew grandma was in her underwear. This makes me smile on so many levels. Grandma Fern would laugh when she’d tell me that story, because she did eventually get Maryjo to come back home and they talked things through. But the way grandma would retell that story, I got the sense Maryjo got a kick out of making her mom chase her in her underwear. 

I tell you that story, because I relate on so many levels. I have inherited some of my mother’s temperament and my dad knew this. In fact, when he first adopted me, I did something that I shouldn’t have done, I don’t remember what it was, and he told me to apologize. I remember sitting on a chair and him telling me I couldn’t get down until I apologized. But I felt wrongly convicted, so I wouldn’t. He didn’t budge, and I didn’t budge. I remember looking into his big brown eyes and knowing he meant business.  The next thing I remember is waking up the following morning in my bed, I must have fallen asleep. But I also remember after that, I didn’t want to be stubborn anymore. I wanted his respect.

All of us kids will attest to his ability to be firm and to earning his respect. When you earned my dad’s respect, it meant something. 

And so this brings me to the messiness of honoring our fathers and mothers even if it’s messy, and it’s something I’ve come to call: generational healing. This is a powerful principle to know about if you have a family tree where you’ve inherited some difficult things from the generations who’ve gone before you. 

My dad did his own version of generational healing so he could help me do better. I love that he helped me bridle that stubbornness and gave me guidance so it didn’t get in the way of my growth. 

My dad did not have an easy life. 

He was born smack dab in the middle of the second world war. His dad, our grandpa Ken, went and served in the war when my dad was a toddler. Grandma Fern had to work to help support their little family. While she worked, dad would stay with his grandparents. He always spoke of them with a lot of love and remembered those times being taken care of by them, as a privilege. 

Shortly after the war ended and his dad came home, dad received a new baby brother, Ronnie. 

Around the time Ronnie was 8 months old, he was diagnosed with cancer of the bladder and had numerous surgeries as a baby. This was a hard time for my dad. He once again would spend a lot of time with his grandparents, and didn’t see much of his mom and dad. Little Ronnie died at three years old. My dad couldn’t talk about it without getting teary eyed. 

Between serving in the war, and losing Ronnie, my dad’s dad, grandpa Ken turned to alcohol. None of us will ever know how hard this was on my dad and Maryjo, and also my uncle Jeff. Grandma Fern did her very best to keep the family together and thriving. And she did an amazing job at that! But it must not have been easy. 

This is one of many things I really admire about my dad. Even though his father figure caused him a lot of pain, he chose to not follow that same route. 

Generational Healing is something you’re going to want to be intentional about if you feel like you inherited hard things that are impacting the way you show up with your own kids and with your spouse. 

One thing my dad was very clear about, was that women are to be respected. He did NOT like how his dad treated his mom. 

I want to share something my dad taught me about my worth, my self-worth as a woman, because as a little girl, that self-worth was deeply challenged. 

Before he adopted me, I had experienced a lot of negative and difficult encounters with previous men in my childhood. And those encounters left me wounded and scarred. So before he adopted me, it was difficult, I’ve had multiple step-dads who just had mental-health struggles. They had problems with their mental health, they had problems in many areas of their lives. But my uncle whom I call dad was different. 

And I know I’m not the only one who has had to heal and do the work of personal growth from problems like this. 

And it can be so tricky to honor your father and mother if you grew up in a home where some of the experiences of hurt and overwhelm were inescapable and ongoing. 

Just for a little more context, my uncle whom I call Dad met Margie during that time, and they married. Margie became my mom even though I knew her as an aunt. But They adopted Joey, he’s my same age and he’s Navajo. And my cute sister Julie, from Korea who is two years younger than us, she was 11 months old. Dad used to tell us the story of when they got the call to pick Julie up from the airport, how excited they were to fly to San Francisco to get her. 

Their marriage was not easy though. They divorced when I was in the first grade. And this is where more challenges came into my childhood, my aunt whom I call mom remarrying and I once again had another step-dad. In the 80’s kids more often than not stayed with the mother in a divorce situation versus going with the father. But by the time I was fourteen, I had had enough and asked my dad if I could live with him.

And so at fourteen, I moved back in with my dad and new step-mom. And it was a soft place to land. Even so, when you’re a child experiencing constant stress or overwhelm, you naturally disconnect to cope. I had what is called Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder which is a natural response to childhood experiences that involved chronic anxiety, neglect, and danger within our closest relationships. My step-dad was abusive. It’s still hard to think about to this day.

Most people have heard of PTSD, which usually involves experiencing a single incident of trauma, for example: going to war, experiencing assault, or witnessing a violent crime. 

But C-PTSD or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder differs in that:

• The experiences of hurt and overwhelm were inescapable and ongoing. 
• They took place in a relationship with a key attachment figure you trusted but then that trust was betrayed.
• For a period of time, you felt like you didn’t have an adult you could process those experiences with, for whatever reason. In my case, my step-dad threatened my safety and threatened to hurt my brother and sister if I told anyone. 

Now, I don’t like to be too hard on my aunt whom I now call mom here. When I was younger, that wasn’t easy to do. My aunt who became my mom had her own difficult things she had inherited from her family of origin - and so for her, she was dealing with her own hard things. And the marriage between her and my dad was messy. I’m happy to say that she finally divorced that step-dad from hell and eventually found the love of her life.

But when I was a teenager, my dad took me in immediately once all the hard things were brought to light. He helped me heal. Dad taught me how to work like a man. Grandma Fern would tease me when we would work in her yard together and ask me where I learned to work like that. I learned it from dad. I remember fetching timbers for him so we could build a fence for the horses, and holding up sheetrock above my head until my arms trembled and shook while he finished my bedroom, and riding in the flatbed of his truck so I could jump in and out and turn over the bales of hay so they could dry properly in the sun. I loved working alongside him, and I loved watching him build things, whether it was a fence, a house, landscaping a yard, building an entryway to our driveway, or rebuilding a broken down truck. He taught me how to stand back and admire our work. He ingrained in me how to savor the feeling that comes from doing a good job.

I was so lucky to have my uncle whom I call dad be a secure and safe adult who helped me process those hard experiences. I talk with many of you in coaching, and we have a common bond in how difficult that can be to carry,  and I have so much compassion for that. 

I want to offer to you that healing and growth is always available, no matter your age, no matter how long ago it was if the experiences of hurt and overwhelm took place in a relationship with a key attachment figure you trusted as a child. 

Complex trauma, C-PTSD, It can create a feeling and internalized belief that you are not good enough, broken in some way, and unsafe within the world.  

I grew up feeling this way. I don’t feel it anymore so much. My relationship with my uncle whom I call dad has played a big part in that, and so does my relationship with God, my Father in Heaven, that relationship is very real to me.

I heard a quote from a woman a few years ago, and it has to do with the game of chess. And sometimes I think life is like a game of chess. I love chess. When I learned how to play it, my husband taught me, and my mind exploded with all the possibilities this game held, and I think of God as a Master Strategist to help me play my life chess game. 

If you’ve ever played chess, you know it has three parts: opening, middle-game, and endgame. The opening is the development of pieces. You are setting up your strategy. The middle game is the implementation of your strategy. The endgame is hopefully where you’re seeing the fruition of your strategy, you are closing in on the win. The Queen is the most powerful piece on the board. And it is conventional chess wisdom that you postpone playing your Queen for as long as you can. The longer you can delay developing your Queen, the more likely you will have your most powerful piece for the endgame. For me, God is the Master Strategist, and knows exactly how to win. 

One thing I love about my dad, he helped me see myself as a Queen. He helped me set up my opening, even though it was messy in the beginning. And he helped me position my pieces in the middle-game to set me up for goodness for my Endgame. My dad wanted to help me see my worth so I could have a strong Endgame. 

He knew the world was moving toward some hard things. He taught me to believe in God, and He wanted me to believe in my own inherent goodness. I grew up in the faith tradition of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but we weren’t super mormons in any regard, we didn’t go to church every week. Even so, my dad was deeply spiritual and taught me to pray and have a relationship with God. He knew if I did that, I would better see my inherent goodness. This worked for him with his own healing from his alcoholic father. 

One gift that I see my dad gave me is helping me understand and make meaning of my past. In order to heal from trauma, we have to understand and try to make sense of our past. Some of us have such painful pasts that even thinking about it can be overwhelming. But he helped me focus on moments of resilience and my inner strengths. He told me stories of my mom Maryjo where she had overcome hard things and how he saw those same traits in me. He made me feel proud to be the person I was and to never feel small or apologize for that. 

I’ve since learned that this is exactly what a good therapist or coach does for their clients. My dad seemed to come by this naturally. 

And so my family story has a lot of messy, but it also has a lot of triumph and victory mixed in with the messy. 

He also helped me be intentional with picturing who I wanted to be moving forward, and what kind of future family I wanted to have. He taught me to see myself as a Queen and to begin with the end in mind, to create the kind of family for myself I always wanted to have in my own childhood, but didn’t have. 

I offer all of this to you here on the podcast because I hope that it will spark ideas inside of you to help facilitate your own generational healing, and to help your kids. 

You are not broken if you’re in need of generational healing. You had to adapt to your environment. And our survival fully depends on our attachment figures or close caregivers when we’re little. 

In order for us to develop a secure and healthy sense of Self, we need secure attachment figures who “see” us through eye contact, responsiveness to our emotions, and by consistently soothing us so we learn how to self regulate. 

When our attachment figures have an insecure sense of self, they struggle to “see” us and meet our emotional needs. They tend to be highly reactive, or easily shut down. Complex trauma develops when our developing mind and body stays in fight-or-flight, and we become hypervigilant or dissociated as a way to protect ourselves. 

But we CAN heal from this through integrating all the parts of us, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual parts of us, and seeing ourselves through a lens of loving-kindness and compassion. My dad had to do this for his own generational healing for himself. He saw this in me and held a lot of compassion for me and helped me do the same for myself. 

And so I hope that my sharing this with you will give you some hope if you or someone you know sees a little bit of yourself in my story. 

I love leaning into healing, even though it’s hard. But it’s a beautiful thing to engage in. That is why I use the Dare Greatly concept as the umbrella of all the work I do, whether it’s honoring your creativity, or healing from a difficult childhood, or being the best parent you can be, or creating the best marriage you can with your spouse, you are daring greatly when you take part in generational healing and can honor your father and mother, even if it’s messy.

Sometimes I’ll run into people out and about and they will share with me something from the Dare Greatly work, whether it’s this podcast or blog post, or a song, or something I’ve said in a talk to the youth that I get to do sometimes, and they’ll share how it has helped them. And this makes me so happy. 

We are a group of people who are getting into the arena, not staying on the sidelines, but who are daring greatly when we engage in generational healing. 

Sometimes the work of generational healing and daring greatly will look like finding a good therapist and unpacking the past. I’ve worked with a few therapists over the years and have a deep respect for their work. Other times, it will be something like listening to a podcast that will spark some insight, whether from me, or someone else further along the road. Or it might look like finding an actual mentor you meet with regularly, a therapist, and learning the practice of self-acceptance, or making sense of your past. All of it is so good to be a part of. 

And so one important thing I hope you'll take from this episode. There is this thing called Post Traumatic Growth. This is a concept developed by Richard Tedeschi, PhD, and Lawrence Calhoun, PhD, in 1996 after they discovered people who have experienced traumatic events are more likely to report positive change in themselves. Note how I said MORE LIKELY.  Don’t you just love knowing this? I love knowing this and I have experienced this. 

Their research found the following positive changes in people who experienced traumatic events: 

• Increased personal strength
• Greater appreciation for life
• Closer relationships with others
• A sense of new possibilities around every corner
• And deepened spiritual development.

I find so much hope in these findings. And my own life experience stands as a testament to these findings. This is true for me. And this is what fuels my work I do here in the Dare Greatly Community and the Dare Greatly Society. 

We CAN be the heroes of our own story because growth and change and generational healing is always available. 

This I know. 

And so I hope this answers some of your questions you’ve had about my story. Trauma can create heartbreak and disconnection from your true sense of self. But you can reclaim your fundamental goodness and you can create a life you are proud of. 

I appreciate how these years since my kids and husband, my own family has been back from Seattle, we’ve been able to have dad and my step-mom AND my mom Margie all together and sit at the same table for Thanksgiving, and for fun holiday gatherings, or come together for my kids' milestone events. That is what generational healing can look like. I didn’t know that could ever be possible when I was younger. 

But it’s amazing. And it shows what being big hearted and doing the work of generational healing can look like. 

And so now, I can take some of the pain I still deal with, but I can also imagine my angel mom Maryjo and now angel dad, how they are enjoying a grand reunion of sorts up in heaven as my dad can wholeheartedly say he did in fact do right by me. 

And while I am going to miss him something fierce, I’m really happy for him to be with his parents, his sister, my mom, his little brother Ronnie, my first born son Noah, and his grandparents. 

I just know Our family has a mighty force of powerful angels to watch over and minister to us. 

Trauma and grief work are an ongoing process. It is never a one-and-done type of work. But the work of doing it is worth it. 

And that’s the perspective I want to share with you of what generational healing can look like.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for listening.

I love you! 

Take care of each other out there. 💛