All families have stories of both crises and strengths. Trials and tribulations are a part of building family resilience. Identifying these stories, and celebrating them through story-telling and traditions, can help you strengthen generational relationships and honor your family history.
Identifying Generational Strengths and Traumas
Generational traumas can sometimes resurface during the holiday season. Healing generational wounds and breaking generational cycles can feel like a heavy burden to bear if you are the only person in your family system working on repair. If you are wondering how to navigate family trauma during the holidays, consider focusing on family resilience, family strengths and traditions, and generational storytelling.
Family Resilience
Finding joy while managing generational trauma is a type of family resilience. Overcoming childhood holiday trauma as an adult might look like re-focusing your perspective on small joys found in the present moment with your family members. Consider celebrating family resilience at holiday gatherings through using mindfulness to focus on the present, finding the sparkling moments where family members exhibit strengths rather than deficits, and even using the method of generational storytelling mentioned below.
Family Traditions
Especially if you are working on healing generational wounds, focusing on family strengths and traditions can help re-focus family members on what’s working in the family. You might use old family traditions to cultivate building family bonds during the holidays, or you might try new family traditions to spur some positive change in the family system. Using positive family traditions to counter generational trauma can help younger family members re-focus on generational strengths.
Generational Storytelling
Generational storytelling is an opportunity for intergenerational healing. Stories might focus on moments of happiness, struggle, opportunity, or grief. Storytelling is also an opportunity to focus on identifying and passing down positive family values. Generational storytelling can even help with embracing family strengths while addressing trauma, such as telling stories of crises which were overcome.
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