My mother met my Dad in her small-town Italian village as she walked home from the market on Sundays. Dad was the flashy super-well dressed single guy who had moved to America, but was back in town. Dad drove a convertible and always wore a suit — tailored of course, being an expert tailor himself. Mom was the country girl who wore skirts below the knee and walked carefully as straight as she could, restricting her round thighs from any sideways movement. Back then, my mom wanted to be a nun. Her mother would have beat the crap out of her if she had found out she was even just looking at boys, let alone grown men. Mom was 19 years old, Dad was 32. It was a three-mile walk from the town to Mom’s countryside home. Mom was walking. Dad was driving — back and forth, back and forth; he really liked her. Mom’s heart pounded, not out of love or curiosity, but out of terror of her mother finding out. Her mother would have blamed her for egging him on.
Ancestral trauma, is trauma handed over generations in similar or adaptive ways. It’s based in intergenerational trauma, which is handed down from one generation to the next through our DNA. They’re both founded in the same principle, but intergenerational trauma is commonly used for the trauma of one or two generations; when we know about their specific story. Ancestral trauma is across even more generations and is generally used to address more widespread oppressions, like sexism, racism, white supremacy, colonialism.
That fear that my mother had — that if someone knew she was being courted, it would hurt her reputation indelibly — that fear accompanies me, too, though I live in a city of 6 million people, 5,000 miles away. I know it was also my grandmother’s fear, because, through my teens and twenties, “Cammina addritt’ — Walk straight!” was one of my grandmother’s most frequent admonishments.
Let me backtrack for a moment. I have a peculiar journey that helped me access all this. I was born and raised in the Bronx, New York City, by Italian parents until I was 10 years old. New York in the 80s was mohawks, rap, punk looks, florescent colors, and Michael Jackson.
Then I moved to small town Italy. 3000 inhabitants — small town. If you include all the people on the farms in a 7-mile radius, then 6,000. I was 10 years old. I was tall, round. I became a signorina — young lady, meaning I had my period later that year. I looked 14. Ironically, the young man who would become my boyfriend four years later, actually saw me throwing out the trash a few weeks after I arrived (yup, that’s how you check-out girls in a smmmmaaaallll town). He thought I was 14, too.
So, my parents, who must have noticed how much attention I was getting from guys who were older than me, regressed the little New York freedom they had gained in the prior 15 years, to go-all out protecting their daughter’s virtue (read virginity). This was a collective effort: aunts, uncles, grandparents were in it too. It was a lot of attention for a girl who was raised in NYC and didn’t know how to “behave.” They were protecting me, right? They were also instilling in me rape culture and the belief that I was the only person who’d be responsible if I got attacked.
Here’s the paradox. I had already been attacked, I just didn’t remember.
So here I am decades later, thinking I’ve healed this stuff. And it all shows up, glaring at me, after I hired someone to teach me how to stand powerfully in front of a camera. She gave me an exercise in my living room.
“Walk to the door and back, stand straight, let your arms flow, and look straight at me when you turn.”
I did it. I felt powerful.
“That works with men, too,” she said.
“I’d be a whore to look at a man like that,” I thought.
No wonder I slouch. I got brain baggage.
So, first, a small caveat. I have nothing against sex workers. For me, women get to do whatever the hell we want with our bodies. Period. I have concerns for how women can do sex-work and not harm themselves emotionally. But that’s coming from the girl who can’t have a one-night stand without falling in love. To each their own journey, life, and body.
So the way I’m using “whore” here, has nothing to do with it’s denotation (definition) doing sex-work, at all. It’s the connotations (implicit assumptions) that are carved in my brain. To be a “puttana” in Italian, implies the worst of the worst, that I have lost my dignity, my self-worth, and my self-respect. In small-town Italy, what must be prevented is any gossip of this nature, for the gossip around a woman’s reputation is the inflation that diminishes a woman’s value, over night. When the town starts talking, your future is over.
I remember the guy who became my teenage boyfriend telling me how one night, in the small town square, a bunch of guys were making a list of all the girls who were dating someone from outside the town… cause they thought they were “better than them.” Another kind of slut-shaming. When the town starts talking about you, you won’t be able to marry anyone from that town. In the low-mobility of Italy at the turn of the century (my grandmother’s generation) and the 50s (my mom’s) any gossip around your virtue meant your chances at getting married were next to zero. Because a woman’s only chance at being seen were walking to and from school, to and from the market (on Sundays), to and from church (still on Sunday), and twice a year to the town feast. In my father’s family, there were weekly evening dances too. But in my mother’s family, women were not allowed to dance, let alone go to such events — even if the dances were only 3 miles away.
So, the protecting of my honor, the inculcation of intense fear about the ruining of my reputation, has been practiced in my family for generations, especially in my mother’s line. I may have just felt it more intensely because I was raised in the Bronx, where this behavior would have been absurd.
So, ever since that first insight, looking my coach in the eye, I’ve been paying attention to where this thought — “I’d be whore if I did that” surfaces.
It’s a very pervasive thought: who I slept with, who I didn’t sleep with, how tight my clothes are, how many seconds I stay in butterfly pose in yoga, not wearing my a bra, not wearing underwear, desiring to be touched in the midst of a pandemic, learning how to relax my body, enjoying the touch of my chiropractic treatment, breathing a deep breath that makes my chest stick out, taking a selfie with pouty lips, wearing leggins, writing the word “period” in an article. Walking in the park with my back straight in the park even while a man faces me in the opposite direction, Etc.etc.etc.
And tougher, even. I’m not a whore for publishing this article.
I was so immersed spotting these misleading thoughts, that I was completely surprised when my yoga teacher said to me: “Rita, we’ve been talking about ancestral healing for weeks, this is ancestral, too.”
It’s ancestral means it’s deep. it means it takes more that a couple of affirmations and a couple of tears to heal it. It means I’m not just healing for me, I’m healing for all the women in my lineage, too. So how do we heal ancestral trauma when it shows up?
There are no definite answers, it’s a journey. Here are some resources:
Family constellations. This is a Zulu intergenerational healing technique written-up by Hellinger, from Germany. The energetics allow us to discover the patterns of pain, healing, and disconnect across generations. I discovered the origins of our wounds through this practice.
Feel the feelings. This morning, during my yoga butterfly pose (legs open wide), my eyes swelled up. I realized there was a time that I had the childhood innocence to not try to end the pose too soon. There was a time when spreading my legs didn’t imply the fear of a man attacking me. That innocence ended at age 7, too soon. I wept to loss of my early innocence.
Somatic Healing. Try new body postures. Every time I breathe deeply or stand straight, I have thoughts about being unsafe, or looking too available. I let myself breathe deeply and stand straight anyway. Two books: My Grandmother’s Hands and The Politics of Trauma offer great exercises and resources.
Allow the discomfort. I’m uncomfortable carrying my body with breath, confidence, and boldness. I do it anyway, I give myself permission to be uncomfortable. I remind myself I’m safe.
Ask the ancestors for support. I tell my ancestors to support this healing, and send me signals for what’s next. My healing is their healing too.
When healing work keeps showing up, sometimes its roots are deeper than we ever imagined. It’s important to see patterns across generations to bring more grace to ourselves and the generations that came before us.
Warning: As this post explains well, healing ancestral trauma is not to be taken lightly. It’s highly recommended we start with our personal trauma first and build healing muscles before approaching the ancestral pieces.
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This post was previously published on Equality Includes You and is republished here with permission from the author.
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