We must heal what we’ve inherited as a collective in order to transform

July’s Theme

We must heal what we’ve inherited culturally, societally, and systemically. What we’ve inherited as communities, as groups. And what we’ve inherited within our families. What shows up in our most intimate interpersonal relationships.

There’s a new world that’s at our fingertips. Many of us can feel it. We can smell it! We know it in our bones. But to usher in this new world - to usher in a world that’s regenerative, that’s fair and equitable, that’s beautiful - we need to heal the remnants of the old. We need to care for the ways - big and small - that we’ve all been harmed. And we need to free ourselves from the cycles that these wounds keep us caught in.

For we know that violence begets violence; and that hurt people hurt people. And man, have we all been hurt in one way or another.

The cyclical nature of hurt can be seen across society. In the cycle of abuse that’s often at the center of domestic violence, we see how relational dysfunction and unhealthy power dynamics can get passed down to children within a family until someone’s able to break free and chart a new path. In the cycle of poverty, we can see how economically trapped people can become in environments that are underressourced and lack opportunities. It’s not until the resources and tools (inner and outer) are available that new possibilities unfold.

The availability of resources is such a key component to healing. The field of traumatology teaches us that we can think about trauma as emotional energy that has not been able to live out its full expression because of an inadequate level of resources, such as a stable home environment, psychologically safe relationships, or cognitive capacity. The emotional energy gets stuck in a person’s mind and body, leaving them tethered to wounds and threat of harm that may no longer exist but that their system is still reacting to, keeping them stuck in a cycle of coping mechanisms. It is once the proper conditions and resources are in place for those wounds to show themselves that a person is able and ready to heal them. Arriving at this place is a reflection of a person’s development and environment. It’s a reflection of their access to resources, within and outside of themselves.

Which leads to an inspiring conundrum. The fact that many of us are feeling long-held collective wounds and the emotional energy associated with them may mean that we’re resourced enough to heal them. That even though our awareness of the wounds that we’ve inherited due to the past, due to current injustices, and due to breakdown is challenging, it may mean that we’re ready and able to work with them in new and constructive ways. That enough of us are resourced enough to do this deep, transformational healing work on behalf of what’s to come.

So in this way, from this perspective, there’s also the invitation to honor what we’ve inherited. To see the bigger picture of how our global, economic, cultural and family systems have delivered us to a place where we are resourced enough that we’re ready to heal. To honor and appreciate the ways we’re evolutionarily positioned to sort through our cultural baggage, hospice the parts that are no longer of service, strengthen the parts that are foundational, and give birth to new ways of being that’ll carry us forward.

This is the hope and possibility I see, anyways.

And I’d love to hear from you. What do you believe that we’ve inherited - systemically, culturally, intergenerationally - that we’re in the midst of healing? What resources or tools are helping us do so? How do you honor them?

Come on over to the We Heal For All community space to share your thoughts and co-create some wisdom around this. Because my guess is that we all are tapped into different threads of this answer, and the best way for us to create this new societal tapestry is to learn from each other’s threads and play around with weaving them together.

Co-create wisdom with us in the following ways 👇

Hi, I’m Liz Moyer Benferhat. Writer, facilitator, coach, and development practitioner dedicated to the subtle interplay between how inner transformation feeds the outer transformation we need in the world. Welcome 🌿