Free Her Soul

Unraveling Generations: Can We Break the Cycle?

Is it possible to heal the mental pain of my grandmothers and their mothers and perhaps their

mothers? Then I wondered, how far back does mental illness go in our family, and is it inherited?

I know of a family where six out of seven children have been treated for depression. Yet in

another family, only one of five children suffer from mental illness. Can we blame our genes or

change our genes?

My maternal grandmother experienced electric shock treatments and multiple psychiatric

hospitalizations over her adult life to treat her severe depression. She lost her mother tragically

when she was only nine years old. There are two different stories about how it happened, the G-

rated version and the R-rated version.

The kid friendly version is that she stood on a stool to reach for something high in the cabinet

when she fell off the stool and hit her head. It was from that fall that she died. My grandmother

told me that story.

The true story, and one she admitted to my sister later in life, was that her mother died of a

botched abortion performed by her own mother-in-law. Let’s unpack that version.

My maternal grandfather’s mother was a midwife, therefore when the “situation” arose, she

assumed her expertise would qualify her to rid her son and his wife of child number four.

Something went horribly wrong, and my grandmother’s mother bled to death at the young age of

twenty-nine.

The plot thickens. Why was the abortion done? Too many kids and not enough money? Did my

great grandmother ask to be rid of the baby? Or was the child another man’s child? Answers we

will never have. The final prospect leads me to the other side of my family. My father’s

grandmother who had three children by three different men, and none of which I know anything

about.



What kind of lives or traumatic events did these women experience to have impacted their

mental health or were they just born this way?

My father once shared with us, only a month before he died, about his mother who suffered from

suicidal ideation. It was revealed at a doctor’s appointment during routine questions about his

own feelings of depression and suicidal ideation. My mother, sister, and I were with him for this

consultation about his shortness of breath and pain in his lower lung. The nurse questioned him

about his family’s history and my father recalled a memory of his mother.

I will never forget how defeated he looked sitting in the wheelchair with his eyes on the ground

and his mind turning back decades. He spoke softly, picturing the exact moment when his mother

said she was going to kill herself by driving her car into a lake. His voice and thoughts drifted

farther, and he said, “I chased after her…I never rode my bike so fast. But I couldn’t pedal fast

enough to keep up. I was about twelve years old.” His head remained low, perhaps thinking more

but not saying anything else. My sister and I darted a look at each other as we had never heard

this story before.

What happened in my grandmother’s life that led up to that moment? How did that impact my

father? I wish he were still here for me to ask him.

Scant research indicates the potential for a spiritual component to have a positive impact on

mental health. My maternal grandmother, Margaret, was raised in the Catholic Church, attended

mass regularly throughout her entire life up until she became bedridden in her nineties. She was

a practicing Catholic, but I will never know if that fed or harmed her soul.

My paternal grandmother didn’t go to church. My father was a spiritual seeker on his own, he

went to church even though his parents did not. He had something within that pulled him

spiritually. If only I knew this when he was alive.

Let’s explore when and/or how the spirit is activated, because we can take the child to church but

we can’t make them drink the holy water. Many children for generations are forced to attend

church, some once a week, some three times a week, others daily. The physical existence inside a

designated building doesn’t feed the soul. That is religion, not faith.

Is it something we are born with, a God gene perhaps? Looking back on my own life, my spirit

was always murmuring to me. At first, I heard it as threats of going to hell if I did or didn’t do

something. But as I matured in my relationship with God, the voice became one of love and

energy. Today, nurturing my soul is as necessary as food to my body.



I once read that we can help heal our ancestors’ pain. That intrigued me, as I know of the mental

anguish of many generations in my family. I want to tap into that process out of love for my

grandmothers and perhaps for their grandmothers and who knows how far back my gene pool

chemicals need balanced?!