Entering the season for family gatherings, Pastor Katie gave such an appropriate sermon today. Do you have a family member who gives you heartburn? Do you know why that person is like that? Perhaps you are aware that your own way of thinking and behaving bothers others. Pastor Katie spoke about how we can inherit the trauma of our ancestors, often unconsciously, but if we are aware of how we pass along this trauma we can break the cycle.

We are each shaped by our family histories and our lived experiences. As a child, I thought my mother’s way of thinking was sometimes on the edge of bizarre. It was not until I sat with her to learn her early life stories to write her memoir, Cherry Blossoms in Twilight, that I became enlightened. She was the product of her very traditional Japanese culture, of poverty and WWII survival, and of how her parents treated her. And so I became an advocate of getting the stories of parents and grandparents to understand how their thinking and behavior affect the next generations, including us and how we will treat our own children. The understanding can bring “forgiveness of sins,” asked for or not, although it’s impossible to forget behavior that hurt us badly.

Most important, becoming aware of how our upbringing and experiences may be contributing negatively to our relationship with others, especially our family members, can lead to change. We can be “born anew,” so to speak. On the plus side, as Pastor Katie said, our ancestors who experienced difficulties may have passed along attributes of patience, resilience, and love! My dad said his mother “was a saint” as she was able to rise above her life circumstances and always be a gentle, kind woman without bitterness. Her sons grew up to be hardworking, gentle, and kind men who took good care of their sweet mother.

Pastor Katie left us with this thought: “We can become the world we want to see… There can be a better story.”

(In July I featured Jeanne Felfe who published her mother’s story of being able to break her family’s cycle of abuse. Her book is I Want to Live! My Journey Beyond Generational Child Abuse.)