Skipping a Generation

My grandparents lived through some tough times.

There was the Great Depression, which forced my grandfather’s parents to send him to an orphanage when he was about 12. There were just too many mouths to feed, and nowhere near enough to go around.

Then, World War II sent the men in my family to places like Greenland and Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The women learned to ration rubber and steel, and to conserve everything. There was an existential war on, and now was the time to make sure we didn’t run out of things we couldn’t replace.

There was no sense in throwing things away, especially in a world where you might not be so sure you could get a replacement. This was the time for a scarcity mindset if ever there was one.

I remember watching my grandmother wash a soup can out with soap, then set it on the dish drain to dry. This wasn’t something to be discarded, but something to be saved. A soup can could be used as a cup in a pinch, and you could even cook something in it if you could hold the can over a flame.

It was understandable that my grandparents had this mindset, even as late as the 70s and 80s—decades after the scarcity of resources had ended for the nation. Having lived in a time when throwing something away would certainly mean doing without, it was hard to change old habits.

What’s interesting to me is that my folks don’t seem to have this intense frugality gene, but I sure do. Why on earth could that be?

As I become more and more introspective over time, I keep revisiting things that made me who I am today. I want to understand myself better, so that I can properly calibrate the way I see the world. I am the lens through which all of this information is filtered, so I had better be sure that I understand how I might interpret data.

In exploring this corner of myself, I wanted to bring in someone who has a great deal of experience in thinking and writing about the human mind,

Kathryn Vercillo

. Her page,

Create Me Free

, tackles the intersection of art and mental health in a really unique way.

Here’s Kathryn describing inherited family trauma:

Inherited family trauma usually implies that the patterns/behaviors/challenges get passed down from one person within a family to others - more of a specific direct transmission such as from parent to child, which I think is what you're getting at with your story of your grandparents. They experienced a certain thing that led to specific behaviors which then impacted your parents and then you.

This form of trauma, she explains, results in specific behavioral and psychological patterns within a family lineage, often unnoticed but deeply influential.

Contrasting this with collective trauma, Kathryn discusses how broader societal events, like the Holocaust or indigenous genocides, impact entire generations.

So I tend to look at all of my behaviors and psychology and mental health challenges, etc, and I wonder how much of that comes directly from my parents and how much of what does come from my parents is via their trauma ... there's not clear answers, at least not for me, but it helps me to see the patterns and have some sense of my "why" so that I can then change my patterns and create change for the future.

Kathryn also touched upon epigenetics briefly—the idea that the genetic code we pass along to the next generation can be changed by trauma or other events.

A pregnant mouse exposed to a specific stressor, like a particular scent paired with a mild shock, might undergo epigenetic changes that alter the expression of a gene related to stress response. This altered gene, when passed to her offspring, could result in the young mice exhibiting heightened sensitivity or aversion to that specific scent, even without direct exposure to the original stressor. This change is not in the DNA sequence itself, but in the way a trait either shows up or doesn’t, or when it shows up.

Could this be what’s going on with me and my grandparents?

Here’s Kathryn one more time:

Basically, when I recognize the trauma that's been passed down to me and the impact it's had on me, I work to heal it and I don't just heal myself which creates change for the generations to come after me, but the idea is that I retroactively heal the past as well.

Speaking of generational trauma, here’s a picture of Kathryn’s amazing dogs, Bumi and Kya, both rescues from the Korean meat industry!

I’m certain that my own folks rebelled against the frugality of my grandparents’ generation, but it must have been a fairly soft rebellion—by the time I was around, my folks were still pretty frugal, but only insofar as middle-class teachers really needed to be. We got new clothes when we needed them, and I always got plenty of food to eat.

The conclusion of WWII brought about an economic boom that saw the United States rocket far, far ahead of Europe, still devastated by the war. My folks grew up in a rapidly rising country, ascendant for the first 25 years of their lives.

Interestingly, I was born during an era of brief decline, when high inflation (up to 20% a year when I was born) took center stage, and unemployment became a lot more widespread. Pessimism about the future spread.

Perhaps the economic conditions alone are enough to explain my own (earlier) extreme frugality. My grandparents lived through the 20s before seeing a huge shock, and they adapted. My parents grew up during a boom that neatly coincided with their lifetimes.

I was born into the toughest time since the 1930s (nowhere near as tough, but very uncertain and anxiety-inducing nonetheless). Perhaps something in me was triggered at an early age because of this.

I think a lot about our ancient ancestors. I’ve come to the conclusion that they were smart, innovative, and adaptable. We owe a lot of the way we live to them.

Looking back on my own personal family history, hearkening back to what Kathryn had to say, I’m mirroring this quest to understand how we got here. I want to know why I am the way I am, in a nutshell. Explaining this to my own satisfaction has its own reward, but there’s also a lot to be gained by understanding why you do something.

Maybe you can alter your behavior for the better, or maybe just understanding where you came from is enough.

What about you? Do you see any patterns of behavior that have been passed down? Have any of them skipped a generation?