Intergenerational transmission of trauma and grief
Recent longitudinal research suggests that those with significant trauma histories have increasing insecure attachment styles. Not only do insecure attachment styles inhibit life-giving relationships, but they may also “impede the development of effective strategies for regulating negative affect and coping with stress” (Ogle, Rubin and Siegel, 2014, p.329). Sadly, trauma survivors often face years of struggle due to intense conscious and/or unconscious anxiety about the very thing they need to survive: close human connections. Survivors of acute trauma are not the only ones who suffer. Larsson (2012) explains how parenting plays a vital role in an infant’s development of a sense of self and others, suggesting that inadequate or absent caregiving leads to long-term consequences (p.10) and potential intergenerational transmission of grief and trauma affects.
How one perceives death (or loss), both of her loved ones and that of herself, will ultimately shape her experience of life and love. Parkes (2006) points out the cross-generational effect of unprocessed grief stating that “bereavement in adult life reflects and, to some extent, repeats the experience of earlier losses and gives rise to grief, both for the person lost and for earlier losses” (p.135). Given the cross-generational passage of loss, bereavement patterns and attachments styles have been reinforced and solidified. Cross-generational trauma, therefore, is a perpetuation of maladaptive attachment styles.
In the following subsection, co-author and contributor to this text, Maya Rose Hormadaly, has offered her story as anecdotal support for the use of expressive arts therapies in the transmission of intergenerational grief and loss. While this text is primarily focused on the specific modality of art therapy, Maya describes this process as achieved through drama therapy. The interplay between images, art making, script-writing, role-play, and performance all work in tandem, however, to give a creative voice to the experience of intergenerational grief, in multiple modalities.
Maya Rose’s story: The motherless daughter integrates a “good enough” mother
My mother did not speak much of her mother. During the silences that plagued my mother’s constant laughter, a void lingered from above her, above us, threatening to consume everything. This void dangled above her through most of her life, a constant reminder of the shadow of her own mother that could destroy everything offhandedly in a moment, even from her years of absence in the physical world. I could tell when my mother’s face was being poisoned by this fear. It was the left corner of her mouth that would tilt downward at first, then her mouth would quiver and I would know that her mother had come yet again to visit.
“Your mother was crazy, wasn’t she?” I asked my mother when I was 11, on a mundane afternoon in the supermarket. She looked around to see if anyone was listening, looked me straight in the eyes, and said bluntly, “She was wonderful.” Not many stories were told about my grandmother; only that she was wonderful, hilarious, and brilliant. I wondered how such a wonderful being could hold such dark powers over my mother. Over us.
My mother was fixated on assuming her role as my mother. As her only girl, I was assigned the role of having a corrective mother–daughter experience, even if she herself was playing the role of mother this time. Any gaps and insecurities my mother experienced from her childhood seemed to be overcompensated with me. I was destined to become the first “fixed” female in a lineage of hurt women. So she wove us together, and I, recognizing her fragility, tied the strings tighter, terrified of the power I knew I had over her.
My mother’s mother, the duchess of the void above, was an artist. Her paintings and sculptures are haunting with their realistic portrayal of agony, female agony. Aside from being wonderful and being an artist, she also lived with a diagnosis of schizophrenia. She was both a force of nature and a cracked soul that needed to be tended to. I felt then, and still do, a strong connection to her. I knew that someone brave had to be holding that paintbrush and kneading that clay.
A month before my mother died in a car accident, I found her sniffling in front of the computer screen, typing as if she were possessed. I looked over her shoulder to peak at the screen, resting my hand on her back. At first she covered the screen, and then she looked at me with torn eyes, and told me that she was writing a book about her mother. It was the first time I saw a glimmer of life when mentioning her mother. I hugged her tight and told her I was proud of her, not knowing that 12 years from that moment I would be in her position, writing about my wonderful, dead mother, and juggling tears of unbearable grief and unfathomable love.
My mother is to me what her mother was to her—the ultimate source of love and fear—an attachment that is entangled in trauma, beauty, and survival. I have always wondered if I, too, would give my future daughter this painful gift of love and fear. This question—will I be like my mother? —is the reason for this self-exploration. Three generations of unprocessed grief seek a different form of inheritance in this thesis. If theater is to me what paint was to my grandmother and words were to my mother—a personal outlet that allowed some sun to come in through the dark void above—creativity is the way to transform my family’s trauma into art and healing.
A performance of intergenerational loss
An arts-based research performance was created to explore the influence of creativity over the transmission of intergenerational trauma and the ability to integrate a good enough mother. To achieve this, Maya explored this transmission of trauma by embodying the attachment triad of grandmother (Florence), mother (Jane), and daughter (Maya).
The artist-researchers engaged in a rehearsal process, examined video recordings of rehearsals, the script, the performance, and the video recording of the performance. Playing the dead, playing herself, and saying goodbye to mother and grandmother were the three most pivotal milestones during this process. These milestones mark evident transformation and profound insight, which ultimately contributed to the integration of the good enough mother in an effort to halt continued transmission of intergenerational loss.
Playing the dead
The embodiment of Florence, Maya’s grandmother, whom she had never met, was a prolonged and pleasurable experience as the amount of physical and emotional distance from her character was significantly greater than embodying the other two characters: mother and Maya herself. The distance from Florence gave Maya freedom and a sense of play while she imitated her character as perceived through stories heard about Florence. There was little commitment to absolute truth as her portrayal was not based on her own memory of her grandmother. The result of embodying Florence was an empathic understanding of the way her mental illness protected her. Additionally, the role of art making became clearer to Maya, as both Florence and she utilize a shared artistry as a means of coping with experiences that cannot be otherwise expressed. Florence, who Maya began this process fearing and resenting as the source of mental illness in her family, became more delicate and Maya began responding to her much like a mother would respond to a child. This transition helped Maya form a healthier bond to her memory and eased the anxiety and ambivalence she initially felt in regards to resembling Florence. At the end of the rehearsal process, Maya felt connected to her and evidently took pride in having shared qualities with her grandmother.
The embodiment of Jane, Maya’s mother, was significantly more challenging. Jane, who passed 12 years ago, was hard to embody and when embodied Maya could only tolerate it for short periods of time. In those embodiments, there was less flexibility and spontaneity as Maya continuously attempted to maintain absolute truth to the memory of her mother; this experience was triggering to Maya as she failed to uphold the authenticity of her mother. Embodying Jane was also somewhat of a revival of her mother which was at times extremely painful as it was a reminder of Maya’s unfulfilled fantasy of her return; this was most present during a viewing of a recording where Maya became aware of her acute physical resemblance to her mother. As the embodiments became more frequent and Maya spent more time inhabiting the role of her dead mother, Maya was able to find more of a sense of play and take joy in the shared love of art and humor. It was a combination of repetition (ritual) and the incorporation of her mother’s music