What is Ancestral Grief?
And how can somatic therapy help you process it
4 min read
Key Takeaways:
Trauma can be intergenerational
Massive group traumas can cause emotional and psychological wounds that are handed down in communities and families
Somatic therapy, with its focus on emotions and the body, can be an effective treatment for ancestral grief
What is ancestral grief?
Ancestral grief is the unprocessed sorrow of your ancestors, the pains they were unable to safely share or grieve, carried into the present. It can surface as sadness, rage, or guilt, and as physical holding in the body such as abdominal pain or neck tightness. Somatic therapy gives these inherited emotions space to be witnessed, honored, and released.
Downtown Somatic Therapy is a New York City practice specializing in body-centered approaches to grief and intergenerational trauma. The page draws on the clinical experience of its therapists and on decades of research into intergenerational trauma, from Vivian Rakoff's 1966 observations to Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart's work on historical unresolved grief.
If the emotions and thoughts that you are experiencing feel intertwined with the past struggles of your families and communities, you may be feeling ancestral grief. Ancestral grief is the sorrows of your ancestors that they were unable to safely share and process. It can manifest as sadness, rage, and guilt in the present moment. It might also lead to shameful thoughts about ourselves and our identities that we are unable to shake. Therapy is a place to explore ancestral grief and to process it so that you can have deeper and kinder connections with your lineages and with yourself.
Few among our ancestors were not faced by trials and tribulations, and many were unable to openly grieve these pains. Systemic oppression and hierarchies might have directly caused our ancestors’ sorrows as well as silenced any attempts to protest and process the suffering. Since it was unsafe to feel and share emotional pain, hurts were often stuffed down and pushed away. Looking around our (biological and chosen) families and communities, we may see the impact of this unprocessed grief today. Difficult emotions may be quickly dismissed. Silver linings and gratitude may be focused on. Perhaps, to many of us and to many of those around us, it seems as if even a teaspoon of grief is too much to bear.
For over half a century, psychological research has examined intergenerational trauma. Canadian psychiatrist, Vivian M. Rakoff, MD, was a trailblazer in this subfield. In 1966, She observed that children of Holocaust survivors had significantly higher levels of distress than the average child. Since then, research has explored the impact of both individual and structural traumas on the descendants of the people who experienced them. Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart, for example, has observed that “historical trauma” or massive group traumas, such as the genocide of Native peoples, can cause “emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations.” She finds that descendants are more likely to experience “historical unresolved grief” and the “internalization of ancestral suffering.”
Tamiko Nishita-Hawkinson, therapist at Downtown Somatic Therapy, says that many of her clients carry unprocessed ancestral grief. “It can be an embodiment of sadness, anger, or guilt in the body, such as abdominal pains or neck tightness. It can be feelings of loss related to the disconnection that people have with their ancestors. It can show up as fears related to financial security and climate crisis. Everyone experiences ancestral grief differently. It is always very stifling and exhausting. Some of the messages that our ancestors passed down to us were messages that they were not intending to pass down.”
“It can be an embodiment of sadness, anger, or guilt in the body, such as abdominal pains or neck tightness. It can be feelings of loss related to the disconnection that people have with their ancestors. It can show up as fears related to financial security and climate crisis.”
Somatic therapy is one way to process ancestral grief. It is a space for your emotions to be witnessed and honored. Present and historic losses can be remembered, and mourning can take place in a compassionate and gentle manner.
A somatic lens can also inform you of how grief is held within your body. Many emotions are often intertwined with grief, such as fear, sadness, and rage. By giving room and awareness to all of these emotions, they can have space to breathe and even to pass through the body so that they are not held in such a clenched and painful way.
Additionally, ancestral burdens and gifts can be explored and even released. Perhaps there are lessons from your ancestors that you want to carry forward. Or, maybe there are pains that you want to unburden. You will also be supported in accessing your own inner wisdom so that you can connect with the ancestor that you want to become with your own families, communities, cultures, and the Earth.
“You will also be supported in accessing your own inner wisdom so that you can connect with the ancestor that you want to become with your own families, communities, cultures, and the Earth.”
It can be difficult to approach ancestral grief alone. For our ancestors, it was a survival mechanism to stifle their sorrows. Doing so might now feel like a survival mechanism to you, too. A somatic therapist can be there by your side, as a supportive companion on the healing journey. Francis Weller, a therapist and a prolific author on grief, writes that, “Grieving by its very nature confirms worth. I am worth crying over; my losses matter.”
Somatic therapy welcomes all of you, your thoughts, your emotions, and the embodiment of your emotional experience. Most importantly, it is a space to give attention and appreciation to yourself, to the worth that your ancestral grief inherently has, and to the many ways in which you matter.
Process ancestral grief with a somatic therapist
It can be difficult to approach ancestral grief alone. A somatic therapist at Downtown Somatic Therapy can be a supportive companion on the healing journey.
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Ancestral grief is the inherited sorrow of ancestors who could not safely process their own pain. It can show up as sadness, anger, or guilt, and as shameful thoughts about ourselves and our identities.
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It can feel like sadness, rage, or guilt that seems tied to your family's or community's past. In the body it may appear as abdominal pain or neck tightness, and it can include fears about financial security or the climate crisis.
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Psychological research has examined it for over half a century. In 1966 psychiatrist Vivian Rakoff observed higher distress in children of Holocaust survivors, and Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart has described how massive group traumas cause wounding across generations.
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Somatic therapy gives your emotions space to be witnessed and honored, and it shows how grief is held in the body. By giving room to fear, sadness, and rage, those emotions can move through the body instead of staying clenched and painful.
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Yes. In somatic therapy, ancestral burdens and gifts can be explored, with the lessons you want to carry forward kept and the pains you want to set down unburdened. You are also supported in connecting with the ancestor you want to become.