Healing my Generational Trauma through Internal Family Systems Therapy in Ireland
I’m just about as Irish as they come, but for the longest time I stayed away from anything having to do with my ancestry. You don’t have to look far to figure out why: my ancestry is laden with generational trauma, including childhood sexual abuse by my grandfather. I didn’t want to connect with my ancestry…I wanted to run far away from it.
Despite loving to travel, it took me years to finally go to Ireland. But I finally did last year…flying in to Dublin on Saint Patrick’s Day, no less. On the drive from the airport to our hotel we were stopped for almost an hour on a winding little road while a St. Patty’s Day parade passed us by. Every adult, child, and dog was decked out in the green and orange, with shiny shamrocks and pints of Guinness waving from every hand not holding a dog leash. It was a raucous celebration, and I wasn’t sure if I loved it or hated it. I’m not a drinker, and in Dublin on Saint Patrick’s Day that’s pretty much the same thing as saying you aren’t even Irish. Blasphemy.
Things changed when we got out to the countryside (which is a theme on my travels, and part of why I’ll be spending most of my upcoming sabbatical in the very, very rural French countryside). Once I was by the calming sea and rolling hills of Ballyferriter (you may remember I sent last year’s Spring Equinox newsletter from there), my nervous system calmed and I began a very unexpected journey to discover the healing wells of Ireland.
Ireland is home to over 3,000 healing wells…sacred springs of water often linked to the Otherworld. There’s no place that has ever quite felt as sacred and witchy to me as the healing wells of Ireland. Or at least there wasn’t until I arrived in County Cork.
If I had felt total calm at the sacred wells, what I felt stepping foot onto County Cork was healing of an even deeper nature. It was undeniable, the ancestral tug I felt on my heart. I felt at home. After decades of avoiding anything to do with my genealogy, I contacted my cousin who keeps track of such things. “Where are our ancestors from?” I asked her. She sent me her ancestry.com login, where I came face to face with Honora, my great-great-great grandmother, who left County Cork for America in 1849.
Quite by “coincidence”, while we were in Ireland, Tom and I were reading the book Clear by Carys Davies for our book club. It’s a remarkable tale, set in Scotland but very similar to what happened to the Irish during their colonization by the British in the 1800’s. I went down a deep dive into what the “potato famine” was really like…a genocide of the Irish by the English, who burned down their homes and turned them out by the millions so that they could raise sheep on the farmland. Sheep were more lucrative than peasants. Over a million people died in just seven years, and another two million set sail for the New World. This wasn’t by choice- the Irish families who sent their children off to America had funerals for them before they left. It was leave or die.
As I learned about Honora, I felt connected to her grief and trauma, and to the land of Ireland, the same land my ancestors had farmed and failed and died on, in a way I never would have expected. I found myself feeling what Honora must have felt- a process that in Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS) we call ancestral unburdening. It was an intense time emotionally, as I found myself feeling both her experiences and my own…and the way they linked back through the generations. Honora was married and began having children at 15 years old, and I’m sure she experienced sexual trauma of her own. It broke my heart to reflect on all the ways we were connected through the centuries…and yet it was so healing, too.
In the healing generational trauma with Internal Family Systems Therapy we do during therapy intensives, we always work chronologically, which means that generational/ancestral trauma is often the first thing that is addressed. It never ceases to amaze me how the ancestral unburdening we do about generational trauma is always directly linked to the trauma that people are carrying in their present-day lives. After all, we are our ancestors. Not only in our DNA, but in the trauma we’ve carried in the cells of our bodies. Honora didn’t leave her trauma in Ireland when she set sail for America. She carried it with her and it was passed from generation to generation until it reached me.
I’ve learned to have so much love for Honora and all she went through. My experience of healing my Generational Trauma through Internal Family Systems Therapy in Ireland finally connected me to my ancestors instead of sending me running from them. During a recent time when I was feeling scared, I connected with Honora’s strength and resilience. In EMDR we call this an “ally”. If I had never connected with Honora, I never would have learned what an amazing ally she could be.
Do you have generational trauma you need to heal? A trauma therapy intensive that works chronologically through your past- including through the ancestral burdens you carry- can provide incredible transformation. One of my favorite quotes is: Trauma is passed through families generation to generation until someone is brave enough to stop and feel it. Are you that someone? Reach out today to schedule your healing intensive. It won’t be easy, but she who is brave is free.
