Unpicking & Re-Stitching the Family Tapestry
Generational Change Makers
Healing trauma and breaking generational cycles is a monumental undertaking and never simply a choice - but a fierce calling. Like an ancient summons from within, one that vibrates through our being, threatening to burst should we ever waiver on taking consistent action towards its release. Perhaps its all the generations before us, now revelling in the freedom of eternal love, compassion and understanding, released from the constraints of this human condition, energetically forging us forward, pressing and moving us towards radical change.
Its as if we have an innate antennae with the navigational abilities to see past the narratives, the deceptions, the lies and traps of this world. A sensory, sensitive, intuitive "other" knowing that becomes stronger than any possible conscious thought or explanation to what actually is. A supernatural power that greatly sets us apart and often times leaves us feeling unutterably alone. We often wear the societal badge of "the black sheep" ostracised without a flock, uncomfortable and at odds with societal norms. However as those of you who have had the calling know, we cannot and must not do it alone.
We all grow up witnessing and absorbing the intricate patterns of inherited story from one generation to the next. Historical designs both visible and hidden to the eye and heart, many beyond the grasp of the conscious mind. In those tender, formative years, we navigate our world through the lens of our caregivers' reality - absorbing the opinions, values, and expectations of others like a sponge soaking up water. We oscillate between spoken rules and unspoken tensions, learning to read the subtle or harsh shifts in energy that signal approval or danger.
Our young minds shape themselves around the familial circle of influence - grandparents' wisdom and wounds, aunties' whispered stories, parents’ silent nuances and booming exclamations of joy. Each interaction weaving into our own understanding of how the world works. Our childhood blueprint forms within the constraints and freedoms of our times and our parents times - the acceptable ways to speak, dress, behave, dream, and belong. Class boundaries draw invisible lines around our possibilities too. Cultural heritage informs our understanding of right and wrong, and societal trends dictate the dreams we are “allowed” to nurture and aim for. Some of us grow up with war time stories echoing through Sunday dinners, others with the weight of tales of illness settling into our bones, and still others with the whispers of family secrets that everyone knows but no one mentions. These early years, when we rely so completely on those around us for survival and guidance, weave themselves into the very structure of our being.
My own story begins to weave in an ancient kilt maker's shop in Edinburgh's Old Town, where the bold, distinctive patterns of clan tartans lined the walls, each telling its own tale of belonging and heritage. Here, among the sweet smell of wool and the creak of centuries-old floorboards, my granny worked as a kilt makers assistant. I remember as a young lass visiting for lunch, a brimming smile greeting me in her “Sunday Best” with a gentle presence and warm hugs masking deeper waters of unspoken grief and second world war hardships. Isabel's legacy was forged through the devastating loss of her mother to breast cancer when she was only thirteen years old, the same happening to her mothers mother before Isobel was born. Even that in itself, two generations of loss of a mother at a young age, if unresolved, is inherited grief. This pattern continued as my granny herself faced breast cancer in her twenties, and thirties, enduring a double mastectomy with - as my mum reflects - grace and characteristic dignity. My grandpa, even though often nagged (a Scottish term for when a wife would incessantly complain to their husbands about their lack of participation in the family and domestic duties), walked strong and attentively by her side gently taking care of her, every step of the way, decade after decade until cancer eventually claimed her in her early 60’s. I was only 19 at the time and my mum in her 40's - now facing our own immeasurable shadows of loss and grief.
My mother - an anchoring thread of unstoppable resilience - the very force that held our family's legacy of strength together. After marrying my dad at the age of 18 endured years of heartache in the mirky waters of physical and emotional abuse, financial manipulation, and the exhausting cycle of false promises and charm. Yet even in the 1970s, when husbands' words were perceived as law and family struggles remained hidden behind closed doors, her inner light never faltered. With her radiant smile ever-present, she worked tirelessly to keep us financially afloat, raising babies into children, children into young adults, young adults into women and men, all the while maintaining the societal facades expected at that time. Her innate intelligence and resourcefulness found ways to flourish, even as an insecure man attempted to diminish her brilliance. She found the capacity and the will to eventually leave the family home, embarking on a life as a solo parent under financial duress, surviving a severe heart attack at age 35, her strength unfathomable, her joy and determination remaining undefeated.
And then there’s my father, a relationship of immense fear and confusion, shame, control and abandonment, repeating cycles of abuse from his father, and perhaps his. A dark line in our family design, intertwined with teachings of practical DIY and domestic tasks that were, along with the trauma, embedded in my DNA. Just as the tartan cloth is woven with distinct patterns and colours identifying connections to places and people, our early experiences create the fabric of who we become. The warp, stretched taut on the loom, representing the fixed conditions of our birth: our culture, class, era, and family history. The weft, woven over and under, become our lived experiences, each pass of the shuttle adding layers to our story, creating patterns that mark us as belonging to specific beliefs, emotions, people and ideas. Whether raised in tenement flats with shared bedrooms and bathrooms like i was or behind pristine suburban fences, in the warmth of extended family and friends or isolated through culture or location, each of us inherits a unique design of who we think we are and what is possible.
Like many of us, I once sat in a tangled mess of my inherited story, my own life both hopelessly knotted and inevitably interlaced with my families. As I grew up witnessing, experiencing and absorbing it all - creating my own complex design between fear and love, shame and joy, connection and abandonment rage and resilience. Many experiences endured, buried so deep, I had no idea they existed. In-fact I could barely recall any stories at all from my childhood, only bearing small threads of connection initiated through photographs and others’s versions of events. It wasn’t until I became a mother myself in my late 30’s that the floodgates opened and I started to experience excruciating repercussions of my early years. Brought on through post birth exhaustion and isolation, I found myself awash with unfathomable emotions, barely able to comprehend never mind contain. Everything had risen to the surface and all at once. But over time drifting in and out of varying forms of therapy, with passionate curiosity and a relentless thirst for change, I began to see each thread for what it was - not an unbearable destiny, but strands that could be gently lifted, examined, and rewoven into a new design of my own choosing.
,The very persistence that once held me bound became the strength that fuelled my transformation. What seemed like rigid perfectionism evolved into a deep appreciation for crafting life with intention. I began to recognise the power in our lineage - women who persisted through storms, whose inner light radiated through loss and fear, who chose life again and again. My grandmother's graceful resilience through multiple battles with cancer and grief, my mother's tenacious spirit and inextinguishable joy despite decades of fear and abuse. My fathers inability to parent his own children from a place of love and connection because he’d never experienced this in his own childhood, growing up in fear and adversity himself - these became not just inherited patterns, but golden strands I could claim and reshape. Instead of constraining my story, this inheritance now adds depth and fierce beauty to the vibrant new legacy I'm creating for my own daughter - gracefully and undeniably reclaiming agency, unconditional love and freedom.
Having someone walk beside us to safely explore these patterns is fundamentally essential to our growth; someone who can hold space, help us understand, with effectiveness and compassion, the behaviours, beliefs and habits passed down the line. Someone to help us gently examine our ancestral inheritance, untangling the complex knots of our story, releasing unyielding, persistent legacies that bind us, wrapping them up into neat little bundles, so we don't end up in a room tied in knots unable to find the beginning or the end. That was me once - battling chronic depression and anxiety, trapped in financial struggle, lack of trust in relationships and intimacy, raising a child while simultaneously confronting my own childhood trauma. I swam in those dark crevices without a map, a torch or hand to hold for years, feeling like no one understood me or could help me. It felt utterly debilitating and alone at times.
When carrying this burden alone, we can become trapped in moments of grief and trauma, caught in repeating cycles, searching endlessly for answers. Like Alice down the rabbit hole, finding one solution only to discover new obstacles, growing to reach the potion on the table and then shrinking, finding ourselves small enough to get through the door but having left the key behind - these cycles can feel endless and confusing and often become the source of misunderstandings and more scars, facing isolation and the very wounds we’re attempting to heal. I've felt this too - the weight of trying to break cycles while those around me remain bound in old patterns. Without the skills and tools to navigate this transformation, we find ourselves cycling back through spirals of shame, fear, anger and sadness. Yet when understanding ears listen, when supportive energy holds us, when the space feels safe, when a gentle compassionate hand reaches for ours, we can unknot these deep-seated patterns allowing entire timelines of stories to be unravelled and released from the past, restored in the present, creating new stronger, bolder, braver patterns for generations to come.
You may be feeling overwhelmed or in a bit of a tangled mess yourself? Support is here. Together, we can untangle these patterns with grace, find those hidden keys, and open doors of possibility you may not even know exist. When you're ready to begin this journey, to transform your inherited story into something of your own design, I'm here to help light the way forward, just as others once did for me.
Reach out to me personally if there is a story or insight that resonates with you or you’d like to share something from your own metamorphosis, I’d love to hear from you. hello@jen-pen.com