An effect of trauma

Intergenerational trauma

Some wounds predate your own life. They live in your body, your nervous system, your family patterns, and your relationship with the world anyway. The descendants of enslaved people. Indigenous communities carrying the effects of genocide and forced assimilation. Holocaust survivors and their children and grandchildren. Communities whose collective trauma was never acknowledged, never repaired, and never stopped. You did not choose to carry this. But it is real, it is measurable, and it belongs here.

It can sound like

“My family has been through this for generations.” “I carry things I cannot explain.” “The pain goes back further than I can see.” “I do not know where my family's pain ends and mine begins.”

If any of those sentences live in your head too, you are in good company here.

Experiences this often follows

Effects do not come from nowhere. These are some of the experiences that people who carry this one often describe. You do not need to have been through any of them for what you feel to be real.

Nothing on this page is a diagnosis, and nothing here decides what is wrong with you, because nothing is wrong with you. Something happened to you. This page exists so that when you are ready, you can find people who understand it from the inside.

You do not have to carry this alone.

Bridge of Hope Recovery is a free, anonymous, peer-led fellowship for trauma survivors. Meetings run throughout the week by phone, by video, and in person. No cost, no waitlist, no one asking for your real name.

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