Your ancestors might have passed along more than their genes.
When we talk about heredity, we often refer to what our genes contain and transmit: red hair, green eyes, a long nose, a susceptibility to diabetes or schizophrenia, certain cancers, autism, musical talent, athletic build, intelligence. I cannot help but look blissfully at the resemblance between my sons and me when they were young (hair color, round face, small nose).
I also smile when I recall my sister’s comment upon discovering that Laurence, her oldest daughter, is “just the same” as me in her tendency to use a towel on her shoulders to naturally dry her hair and that we also share a posture when she firmly puts her hands to her back — just as I witnessed my youngest son, Kristof, do multiple times during his soccer practice.
As we are discovering, the power of the genetics transcends facial features, temperament, medical conditions or behaviors. My recent self-affirmation process while turning my home into a giant coloring book provided a great illustration of this. And I must thank my renunciation of the tyranny of perfectionism, since it allowed me to learn, upon realizing that the cabinet doors I had just painted were now overlapping in multiple locations despite meticulously screwing the hinges back in their initial location, the importance of sanding surfaces before applying a new color.
I now know the sanding is not just for better penetration of the paint, but also to remove the old and to shed the baggage, tastes and memories of the previous owners. The grey of the cabinets was not serving me (I abhor seeing grey everywhere, it is too depressing) and I like when blue greets me every morning. So, I should have sanded at least the side surface at the junction of each pair of doors before applying the first layer of indigo blue to start fresh and make sure there was enough room between the doors to reduce overlap. Four additional coats of paint (two for each door) were sufficient to change its thickness, and therefore to reduce even more the negligible space at the junction of two symmetrical doors.
So it took the alignment (or, its lack of, to be more exact) to consolidate and illustrate the epiphany that made itself louder the day after I observed the kitchen imperfections: if we do not cleanse what is from our past (and that includes the unsolved dynamics of our ancestors, sometimes as far back as eight generations), we run the risk of staying encumbered by their weight and therefore carrying a dissonance against our reason for being. If we skip that sanding or dusting process, the path on which we journey through our lives risks being misaligned with our profound nature and mission.
I told my mother, who was helping me repaint and was rather perplexed, that these were no longer the same doors. A simple change of tone also meant adding enough layers of paint and moisture to alter their composition. We had buried the past, but had not solved it, as a preliminary step for “proper closure.”
I welcome, accept and applaud the lesson, which most of us know on a cognitive level, but that took place experientially for me this time. What is not examined, accepted and solved risks being repeated — and potentially in an amplified way. To translate what a professional said during a recent symposium on psychogenealogy in France that I attended virtually, “The denial of a generation is the delusion of subsequent generations.” The space between the doors was already borderline. Not having computed that resulted in an exacerbated overlap, a negative, aberrant, “delusional” space. It is the same with trans-generational patterns emerging from salient family events: taboos, secrets, regrets, the left unsaid, the unnamed and unnamable, the shames, the ruptures, the thrown stones, the scapegoats, the condemnations, the martyrs, the unsolved feuds… all of this baggage might be re-enacted in subsequent generations if not properly addressed.
My own story and the one hidden within my genealogy (my “prehistory,” which includes facts and events preceding my birth) overflows with tears and suffering from ancestors. Without going into too much detail (other articles, maybe a book, might be needed), it is safe to say that my chronic need to rummage flea markets and people’s minds and their past in my job as a psychiatrist naturally applies to a need to look inside of me, at everything that composes what I conceptualize as “me.” That is to say, the two lineages that led to me: my ancestors on the Grenier and Giroux sides. If we notice a horizontality in our patterns that we repeat in our own lifetime (tendency to select similar partners because of attachment style, other preferences, etc.), there also exists a vertical movement (from one generation to the other) or even diagonal, or spiral, which means patterns might go in unexpected directions in a familial landscape.
Do you have a symptom, a discomfort, a recurring nightmare, an obsession, a dilemma, a painful dynamic? Are you wondering where that comes from? What do you know about your family, your parents, their relationships before meeting each other, maybe other half-siblings you have never met? What do you really know about them, and their parents, and other ancestors? Are there “holes” in your family myth, or topics that were always avoided in gatherings? We need to ask these questions because while we can sometimes find a medical explanation for disease or a psychological explanation for a defense mechanism, we must also look for the genealogical explanation for all of these within a broader framework. Many experts have witnessed resolution of symptoms or problems once the person took the time to develop awareness, explore their ancestry, connect the dots and reposition himself or herself into existence.
Start working on your genogram. Become the detective of your ancestors’ legacy and try to retrace those disappearances, ruptured branches on the family tree, desertions, mysterious witches and banished outlaws, burnt on the stake of conformism, religious fundamentalism, or other -isms. Look at dates that repeat themselves by marking different events (death, divorce, birth, marriage, and so on). Discover the story behind your name. The key to your own struggle might be within a similar story of a relative who lived before you, and therefore, in your prehistory; in which case, I believe you have been chosen to bear this life challenge and shed light on a problem. When you become aware of this, you obtain, through your enlightenment, the power to free your ancestors, yourself, and your descendants by refusing your role in the dynamic of an unconscious reenactment and hence through the reclaiming of your life trajectory, aligned with your values.
This total awareness, this “seeing” (which one can never unsee again), is also a divine privilege. It is the ultimate liberation and then freedom, because it is the legacy for the future generations (even if you don’t have children, you might have siblings or cousins who will, and they need your understanding and awareness to make sense of their own, similar adversity). It becomes an immunity towards ancestral suffering that you or other family might not have to go through because it can stop with you. Otherwise, we risk repeating what we ignore or forget. We all have the choice to say, “No more. This trauma, this suffering, this pain ends with me.”
It is therefore this introspective task that I have embarked on for many years now, behind the scenes of my work in the enchantment of colors that I spread in my home, from sad grey to lively “Kristof’s soccer outfit” blue (and also Youri’s outfit when he was younger, and Andreas’ blue belt in taekwondo that he recently earned). What a delightful symbolism and powerful synchronicity.
Now I know why this particular blue spoke to me. This reflective work is the work of a lifetime and beyond. I ask a lot of questions to many relatives, some welcome the opportunity to tell a story and send me info or pictures of deceased relatives while others are uneasy. “Why unbury the past?” they may ask, especially when it was painful.
For me, it is not about judging or condemning. It is about understanding and putting the pieces of the puzzle of my life together. If a person behaved poorly, or another one I was close to turned out to have hurt other people, I observe and wonder if a permutation of that dynamic is currently enacted in my own life, affecting the ones I care about, or how this might have affected me up until now. It is about ownership and taking responsibility for one’s own life path, just like any other form of self-awareness.
One of my mom’s favorite quotes or statements I assertively uttered as a child after walking into a room was, “Bon, on fouille!” (“So, let’s rummage!”). As evidence, in more than one picture I am found hidden in kitchen cabinets or emptying stuff at our house or at my grandmother’s.
And I have not changed much. I am dedicating my life to this exploration for the beings I love the most on this planet. Ideally, if two parents want their children to benefit from such a fountain of wisdom, they must both embark in this task, because there are residues on both sides of a genealogy. I am doing my part because I want to leave my sons, their cousins and their own children a legacy that will help them understand what is happening to them, to me, to us… in order to make unconscious patterns and ghosts conscious so that we can wildly expand our life and soul, finally free from the shackles of the past.
Email Dr. Giroux
