Introduction
Understanding the heritage of your family, the high points, the challenges, and some specific key moments and personalities, allows each of us to formulate and tell our stories of where we come from, where we are now, and where we are going. This connective and often disconnected thread within the family tree can bring amazing perspective, meaning, and clarity to what is the chaos of our lives. We don’t have to react and run from the past! Knowing the story of our past generations is a gift. The good stories and the bad ones bring meaning, authenticity, and knowledge for our current generation. This knowledge increases the ability to avoid problems and pitfalls in our lives and decreases anxiety about raising our own families (Bowen Center for the study of Family).
Watch this video on Bowen Theory and the Family, where self-differentiation was derived, by senior faculty Victoria Harrison.
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Are you perpetuating some of your family’s anxieties?
Is there fear surrounding certain events or people from previous generations that are impacting you now?
Is it possible to make contact with your family history and by doing so bring difficult circumstances into the light of a new day?
Seeing Historical Context
Victoria says that coming to understand the historical context of our ancestors in their time and place allows people to identify with them and the negative or difficult circumstances they come from. We can then initiate conversations with our families now about these often-taboo topics. It places those reactions and emotions in their proper place in the past, freeing us from having to perpetuate them in the present and the future.
Reacting, Running, and Ridicule
My father’s father grew up in Montreal, Canada. I heard the story of how the family migrated to the Boston area in the 1920’s. Herbert LaFleur was man with a fiery temper. He was a newspaper man. He worked at a newspaper helping bring the daily edition to press as a type plate operator. Every day during lunch the guys would sit around and eat. Well, as the story goes, he was a bit reserved, didn’t speak openly about his emotions, and was quite sensitive to the looks and comments of others. Perhaps he was a bit paranoid and fearful of ridicule. Well, when one of the other men tampered with his lunch box putting a hot seasoning onto his food, little did I know that this would greatly influence my future!
After biting the tampered sandwich, my grandfather’s eyes bolted upward making eye contact with the culprit who was now pointing and laughing. Some would have shrugged it off, but not Herbert. He stood up, marched over to the man, ripped the newspaper out of his hands and punched him in the nose laying him flat on the factory floor. This was quite the dramatic reaction, and one that would have life-long consequences.
Being a union job, no violence against a fellow union member could be tolerated. Herbert was out of the union and out of work. He would then have to tell his family what happened and decide whether to move to New York City or Boston where union papers could graft him in there. They decided on Boston. Well, to fast-forward to his son, my father Bernard, it became apparent that same reactionary anxiety lived in him too. A fear of ridicule, which he did come to finally admit, would plague him for most of his life until old age. The fierce reaction of his father was undoubtedly passed on to him and he would pass it on to my father, and eventually to me.
My father would go on to work at a newspaper for many years at the Boston Herald American. He dutifully fulfilled the role. A deep seeded anxiety lived in him though. This played out into his falling into alcoholism, a disease that his father had, and his father before him. Having myself made my mistakes with alcohol, heard the stories from my generations, and evaluated their value and impact in my life, I began to believe that it could be different for me. I began believing there was access to forgiveness and the ability to break the pattern. I could stop reacting in fear and anxiety from the past and move into healthy connections where love covers many wrongs.
Suggested Action Step
Make a family tree chart. Try to go to at least your great grandparents. This will be 8 grandparents. Think about the characteristics of each person in the tree and note major conflicts or negative emotional fields between generations. Reflect on how some of these observations are embodied in your life today. How can you start family discussions to bring these to light?
Conclusion
Often people look to blame a chaotic world for their problems. Perhaps there have been people in your family that have let you down. Your expectations may not have been met. Those same people may have been let down by those that came before them or inherited their reactive nature towards negative emotional and spiritual realities. Becoming aware of these events, attitudes, and people within our family history can lift us to a higher level of self-differentiation in our generation now. What we embrace and embody can strengthen and encourage the generations that come after us. A willingness to face these conflicts and bring them into the light is a channel of great healing and empowerment.
Question for Reflection: What is one family conflict that has impacted your life? Would talking about it with family members be helpful for you? Are there areas of resentment that need forgiving?