What is interGenerational trauma and how is it impacting White people?

In these shorter episodes, called "chute blocks," Loran and Jenny explore the ideas and concepts which inform the work of The Spillway.

What to expect in the episode:

• InterGenerational Trauma fundamentals
• Implications for our work in the present-day
• How working with our interGenerational trauma will change our future

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For a transcript of this episode and more, please visit our website, www.thespillway.org

Mentioned in this episode:

The Spillway Community Guidelines

1. Engage sequentially. The show is a serial not episodic. We do this so we can build relation and find common ground and context. 2. We stay in our own lane. The Spillway is about White people talking to (predominately) White people about White people and White culture. We're not out here to critique anyone's actions but our own. 3. Our combined fabric of destiny. (3a) As Dr. King said, our humanities are deeply interconnected to each other. Racism negatively impacts me, too. (3b) The Spillway is one mechanism within a larger framework needed to sustain racial equity and justice. We're not a one-stop shop. 4. No one right way to liberation. We all share the same goals, but not every method works for every person. If this doesn't work for you. That's okay. Maybe it works for someone else.

In the first episode I call it a "mini teach-in."

Oh, yeah, let's do it.

Uh, mini teachin "teachin".

It

sounds

like tea chin.

Yeah.

That's what it sounds like.

I don't know

It's a mini, it's a mini teach.

It's a teach many.

A small T

it's a

Spillway moment *laughs*,

but I like that.

Oh a chute block!

Yeah.

It's a chute block.

Cause that's, that is part of The Spillway thing we should do.

You already did something like that?

Like about The Spillway.

I think you posted something on Instagram,

on Instagram, but we need to do, um, a chute block about it that way folks know.

But like, this is like,

what is this?

The water.

Are you being water right now?

It's very like, like what's this, I wouldn't say violent, but this, I

think going through chute blocks could be really violent because

you're like flushing into a brick wall.

And then the other way, if you were a human smashing into the

brick wall, humans should not go through a fucking actual

literal spillway that'd be awful.

You die immediately.

Yeah.

So let's call it a spillway chute

block.

One chute block in The Spillway block

just to chute block, but that's the, okay.

So maybe to explain this when the water is coming off, the spillway, it needs

to interact with these chute blocks in order to slow down so that once the water

goes into the river or the Creek or the whatever kind of water basin is collecting

the spill off of the reservoir at the dam.

Um, it doesn't hurt the ecology of where it's landing.

That's the whole point of a spillway.

Oh!

I

Missed that.

Well, it's

like two things.

So one is to release excess water so that it doesn't breach the dam.

So

that's what I just thought it was.

I didn't realize about the ecology stuff.

Oh, well then so yeah, that's the thing.

If you just released the water.

And there's actually some like, really intense videos of people like

opening a dam or opening a spillway for the first time in like decades.

And there's just a whole bunch of like soot and sediment.

It's just like compacted.

And so it actually just looks like a giant like fudge machine.

It's just like pushing it out, like all this dirt, and then just starts

like spewing and this water can go.

Insainely far and fast.

Um, and so if you don't slow it down, you would just end up like taking

a fire hose to the chipmunk, which is not what we want to have happen.

No, no.

And so that spillway slows the water down.

Gotcha.

So it's less violent.

And that's why I wanted to call it "The Spillway" , because it has this double

meaning one, we want to make sure.

We're not breaching the dam.

Um, but if we are, we've got a place to go.

Um, and that's kind of like the harm reduction aspect for ourselves.

We have to take care of ourselves.

Um, and this lake reservoir, this pool, uh, this body of water

that, you know, in this metaphor is White people and Whiteness.

Um, but then when we release that, when we, when we go downstream, when we

connect, cause water does doesn't stay in the reservoir for ever, um, it connects

with the world around us constantly.

And so when it's going through.

The dam and it is released and goes through the spillway, either through

excess water or through, um, or through a chute block, then it slows down and

becomes more intentional in how it exists in the larger world or within the

larger ecology that it then enters into.

Uh, and so then that's where it becomes preventative work.

When we talk or when we think about healing ourselves as a

way to support other people.

And so, yeah, it's a really long kind of over intellectualized way

of, of why I have, why I thought calling this work, "this spillway" was

important because it has this double meaning both for the dam, but then

for the ecology and the surrounding area that can be like incredibly

impacted were that dam to break or.

They're not to be a spillway

*lauhgs* a

little side wink.

A little wink and a nod.

So in this chute buck, we're going to talk about intergenerational trauma.

Let's get it going.

Okay.

Intergenerational trauma is a little bit easier to understand.

So this definition is going to be a little bit shorter.

First.

It's important to understand the role of epigenetics or that the field of

epigenetics exists in science, epigenetics studies, how genes express themselves.

It's really hard to change DNA, but how our DNA is read or not read by

our biochemical process is learned through our inheritable phenotype chain.

That's a mouthful.

So let's unpack that a little bit.

Roughly, we all have a unique biochemical process, which is informed

by our appearance diets, pollutants that they lived within and even

major emotional or social events.

Our bodies attempt to adapt to change in our surroundings so that we can survive.

It's how we evolve and adapt.

Our body has passed that information down to our offspring

based on the Punnett square.

Our bodies received this information from the DNA within the egg and the

sperm you were body can end up reading some DNA, like one person and other DNA.

Like another person.

Our bodies are amazing.

I know I had to go through a biological refresher myself, just

so we could have this conversation.

Uh, but within the past five years, data that's been published suggests that how

our bodies read its DNA is informed by five generations of phenotype changes.

That means that the diets, the pollutants, the major social events of your great,

great, great grandparents, still in 2022 inform how your body reads it's DNA.

Importantly how even our great, great, great grandparents were

reading their DNA was informed by our great, great, great, great, great,

great, great, great grandparents.

Maybe we'll think about this another way.

Maybe we've gotten too abstract when people who menstruate are

born, they're born with all of the eggs that they will ever have.

the egg that was needed to create you or before it was

fertilized was in your grandmother's body.

And this is why we see genetic traits, skipping a generation, the egg that turned

into you was created in your grandmother.

The diet pollutants, social events of your grandmother explicitly

informed the creation of you.

And that exact same is true for your grandma.

From the oldest boomer to the youngest millennial.

That means that the agriculture, the pollutants and the social events

from as earliest 1646 to 1696 are negotiated within our bodies today.

Trauma is passed down, not just socially, but chemically how my Irish ancestors

navigated the potato famine in the 1850s or how my Polish ancestors experienced

the pollutants of the south of Poland during the industrial revolution in

the 1870s or how my American ancestors responded to the enslavement of more

than 4 million Africans and their descendants that lives within me today.

We study history to know ourselves.

And this isn't about excusing behavior or past wrongs.

It's about understanding why and how the knot was tied so that we can untangle

ourselves from this hurt, hurts to other people and hurts to ourselves, but really

holding intergenerational trauma as something that was passed down to us.

Something that is within our bodies.

And adding an additional layer of perpetration induced, traumatic

stress, I think creates the paradox of being White in America and that

we are simultaneously perpetrators and victims of race and racism.

And the paradox goes on appreciated so often at a social or, or

mainstream discourse level.

And that's where The Spillway comes in to create a space where we can openly talk

about and share in and grieve and heal and mend White culture so that it is built

in compassion, understanding, patience, empathy, and understanding no more, no

less, but to do that work as White people, I can't heal anyone else, but myself

and I'm on that path as a White person.

And I'd really love for you to join us because my healing as a

White person is wrapped up in your healing as a White person, too.

Because when that other White person acts out of pocket, that reflects

on me and it reflects on them.

And we live in a hyper individualized society that wants

to say, "oh, no, no, no, no, no.

I am not that I am this"

I was actually talking to my mom about this last night.

You know, that my grandmother, I was present in my grandmother's

body, which is crazy to think about because I never met her.

She died long before my mom moved to the states, but in my heart,

I like in my body and my DNA.

So not in my heart cause that's like too abstract, but in my

body and in my DNA, I know her.

I ha I carry her struggles and her pain and her joys and all that.

It's just so crazy to think about how you can have never met someone.

You've never knew someone and then, but you are, they are such a huge

part of who you are as a person.

And in terms of, you know, what The Spillway is about.

Thinking about how they handled, you know, that, that side of the family,

Irish and English, how they handled all that stuff, pain and societal pressures

and trying to fit into whatever.

Box.

They had to, and never, you know, "stiff upper lip" is a thing.

So never, never having to deal with that.

And then watching my mom have to deal with that.

And then watching me have to deal with that is, you know, that pain has never.

Never been dealt with and by dealt with, I mean, I don't mean that sounds

very harsh and dismissive to the pain.

What I mean by "dealt with" is held compassionately.

So that, that, that idea.

You talk about, it's just crazy to me that we were all present

within our grandmother's bodies.

Yeah.

I never understood it until I, yeah.

That like a visceral kind of connection and feeling it in your body of like

oh, wow, I was my grandmother's body, literally the DNA that has made me.

And so when thinking about my parents talking about race and racism is

from this different time, like that different time lives in us.

And so while we're trying to heal our hurts, we're also trying to

heal like our ancestral hurts.

And so it feels much larger, but in some ways it feels more manageable

of like, oh, wow, let me just actually learn my family history.

And let me see what those hurts are rather than just kind of like willy-nilly going

out in the world and being like I'm hurt because of intergenerational trauma.

I'm a victim.

Oh, you mean that doesn't work?

No.

It's.

What is your specific family's history?

What did your family go through rather than just like flinging all the spaghetti

on the wall and seeing what sticks?

That's

interesting.

Isn't it?

And an analogy.

It's not like you have to throw something on the wall to see if it sticks.

And what does that

paint might as well be spaghetti, like

I think I have like 0.5% Italian, something, something in there somewhere.

I'm sure.

Yeah, it gets, it gets mixed in there for me personally.

It's a super overwhelming thought up until very recently.

I've always just assumed that I was dealing with patterns of

behavior that were passed down.

And instead of like, it's actually in the makeup of my body.

So I was always like, well, once I start meditating or whatever, I'll fix it, but

that's, that's not how that goes too.

So to me, it makes it feel really big.

And, uh, out of reach,

I feel like it would just be more liberating.

That's kind of how I experience it, of like, oh, these aren't my patterns.

These are patterns that were given to me.

And so sometimes when things happen, I'm like, "oh, all right.

grandma."

Yes.

Let's stop that.

Let's stop trying to blame other people when they're late.

Cause like punctuality,

right?

Not in my world, but I, I see it in other people's worlds.

But it like shows like I was like, even in our meeting today, like

showing up five minutes later, I was like, "oh my God, I can't believe it.

I can't be late I can't be late", but it's also Jenny, like, Jenny

knows that, like, I'm just going to show up when I'm going to show up.

But then there was this other thing of like, oh, I learned punctuality somewhere.

Mm.

I see.

Yeah.

No, for me it still feels really, really overwhelming, but

it's also makes me really sad.

Which sounds like, "oh, you poor thing", but not like, just thinking of

like, if we didn't have that, I might as a person who menstruates and as

a person who has a uterus that could carry another human being that's in

turn carrying another human being, you know, I could change that narrative.

But I am too frightened and sad to do that.

Also we've talked about this.

I don't, my life is such that I don't want to, you know,

bring a child into the world.

That's just not separate from all that.

But like what little free time I have.

I like it.

You know, but yeah, there's just makes me sad, which is Naval gazing.

I realized, but I also just, you know, I was just like, oh, that's sad.

womp womp

I think if we can acknowledge where things come from, I think it

feels a little bit easier, but yeah, I do understand the pull towards

it feeling really overwhelming.

Not knowing who, what, where, when, why and how sometimes of how we act,

because the other piece too is if we leave them unchecked, um, we just

kind of disassociate from our own personal experience and we just call

it like a personality trait, but the more that we invest in our own.

Education of ourselves.

I just feel like that will change.

And it does change how future generations understand themselves and access it, like

what your grandparents were doing impacts you, but also what you do impacts you too.

And so if we were to have kids, our grandkids would then look back to us and

be like, what the fuck were they doing?

Right.

And in some ways, like, that's what we're doing with our grandparents right now.

Right, right, right.

Yeah.

And so we have agency, you know, as much as like agent agency is like, uh, a choice

or an illusion under capitalism, but our individual responses to each other would

be held in question by our own grandkids.

also, I'm perfect.

So I don't want any little grandbabies being like.

Fuck you doin' grandma?

There's grandma's Skinner

or grandma

Skinner and her insert personality trait here,

her inability to let other people talk in a conversation

which you like to join this.

Do you have something to share?

Like, I think the goal of The Spillway is super lofty, which is why I love it.

Um, and I think it's important, but it can also, for me feel like,

like, "oh my God, this is so much larger than I know what to do with",

there's a quote that's been floating around the internet that I've seen.

I don't know who it is and I'll probably butcher it because

that's who I am as a person.

But essentially it says.

'You're planting seeds for trees that you will never sit under.' Essentially.

I love that it's, um, you know, you're planting seeds that that hopefully

when we're gone, people will still be cultivating these trees and watering them

and taking care of them and whatever.

We may never see them

but the hope is that by planting the seeds, you know, there'll be there.

This reminds me of Amy Hillier's interview because she said

we have to do this for our kids.

It's true.

And I was like, okay,

sure.

Like kids that felt yeah.

Like,

yeah, cause we're we're children-less folks.

Yeah.

We're not going to have kids.

Nope.

But if I learn how to metabolize and process racialized conversation, And

were I to have kids, then they would inherently biologically chemically

have a better understanding as to how to metabolize racial conversations.

And so, yeah.

Yeah.

We're not trying to, we can't actually change all of White culture right.

Through The Spillway within our lifetime.

Right, right, right.

It's going to be a couple of generations

at least.

I mean, we shouldn't start.

Oh no, that means we have to start now.

Right.

Yeah, I was just, sorry.

I meant that like for myself, cause my self was like, well just don't do it.

That someone else do it.

You're not having kids.

So it doesn't matter.

Doesn't matter.

Nope.

Control alt delete backspace, backspace that controls the undo.

Undo.

Yes, we were given this like intergenerational trauma and we

were also given intergenerational strengths and intergenerational

compassion and love and empathy and understanding and patience and support.

And like, let's just not lose sight that we were given so much.

So, so, so much, uh, each and every one of us in our preciousness.

We also have these really great strengths too.