The Zephyr Sleeps Tonight… On Healing Intergenerational Patterns

It's the last night of our trip to Charleston to visit my brother and his family and Zephyr (5 years old) is not cooperating with bedtime. I'm tired and ready to be done parenting and finish packing for our early morning flight.

Zephyr is practically bouncing off the walls.

I notice my nervous system getting more and more charged and can tell I will eventually snap and loose my temper.

"Zephyr, I'm feeling myself getting upset and am worried I might loose my temper if you don't cooperate with bedtime."

In the moment I feel proud about my communication, but later I realize this is kinda a sneaky backhanded threat. I'm essentially saying, "If you don't behave, I'll yell at you." Not exactly my best parenting move, but not my worst either.

"Hazel, it sure would be sad if our whole wonderful trip was soured because Zephyr couldn't cooperate with bedtime on the last night of our trip." Tactic #2 is pretty bad too. I'm essentially trying to guilt or shame Zephyr into behaving.

The good news is that as I was saying this I got a flashback to a camping trip and realized exactly what was going on.

"Zephyr, are you feeling sad about leaving your cousins's house and our vacation ending?"

"Yeah," he responds.

"Oh, honey, I get it. I feel sad too. We've had so much fun here."

As soon as I acknowledged his feelings (which he couldn't articulate on his own), his nervous system settled and he snuggled into bed. He fell asleep almost immediately.

I lay there for a moment, a bit stunned, reflecting on the whole event.

The real significance of this event can only really be understood in the context of the camping trip I had a flashback too:

I’m camping with the Hazel and Zephyr in the Wyoming backcountry. I took the kids for the weekend to give Mama some room to breathe. It’s a beautiful spot I’ve never been to and things are going exceedingly smoothly. I’ve been with the kids plenty on my own, but I’ve never taken them camping solo. All the same, I feel grounded and confident.

We find a great spot and get the tent and camping kitchen set-up. Hazel’s six and Zephyr’s two and half, so they’re not actually helpful but I do my best to include them all the same.

We’re eating dinner in the golden pink light of the setting sun amidst beautiful granite rock formations. It’s the kind of rock that with the right lighting and a little bit of Wonder takes on a living quality. The kind of rocks that feel like elders. I’m so grateful to be in nature under the big sky with my two adorable children. Dinner is simple pasta, we gobble it down with glee.

Time for bed. We get into the tent and snuggle in… reading books, singing songs. But Zephyr is resisting every part of it. He won’t have it. I start out gentle and calm. I’m thinking he simply doesn’t want to go to bed and is just acting out, you know, being a little booger.

I start to firm up. I’m getting annoyed.

I’m ready to have some peaceful quiet starry sky time to myself.

We’re in an upward spiral towards chaos. I don’t catch it. I lose my shit and start yelling at him I grab him with intensity and far more firmness than is needed. We’re in an ugly place until somehow Zephyr manages to say he wants mama.

In nanoseconds my body slackens. I deflate. Fuck. I fucked up.

Here I was thinking he was just being a poopy-head, when it turns out he was trying to communicate something. Something he had trouble putting words to.

Of course he was having trouble going to sleep; we’re away from home, away from mama, and he’s not as used to camping as his big sister yet. I immediately shift towards affirming his feelings and comforting him. Reconnecting and apologizing for my angry outburst. He settles. We settle together. He falls asleep quickly after that. I’m so struck by his innocence while he sleeps.

I reflect on what just happened under a vast clear starry sky. I feel shame and remorse and regret. My mind vies to analyze the events. Thinking about it pulls me out of the intensity of the feeling a little bit. I attempt to use some of the skills I’ve developed with my coach. I feel inside me something that feels like the motivating force behind the way I responded to Zephyr.

As I feel into this force, images of my paternal grandmother, my Nana, come into my consciousness. My mind weaves a story. My Nana was a sweet and lovely grandparent, but she also had a stern and cutting quality. From stories I’ve heard I know she wasn’t the softest and most maternal mother. I feel this quality within me.

The harshness that I took out on Zephyr when he wouldn’t cooperate with my plan, when I couldn’t control him with my words. I understand it now as an inherited quality from my grandmother. In the psychological world it’s considered a type of Shadow called an introject, it most likely came through to me through my father.

Tapping into skills I’ve developed in coaching again, I send this energy back up through my lineage, back to where it came from.

No reason for me to carry patterns that don’t belong. Patterns that don’t serve me or the lineage. I make sure to offer gratitude for all of the positive things I’ve inherited and I of course acknowledge that wherever this came from, how it arose, it was never meant as a malicious pattern, it was merely the best known coping mechanism for whatever difficult, perhaps impossible, situation the originator was in.

I feel small under the starlit sky. But somehow, I feel a little lighter. And the smallness I felt from yelling at Zephyr isn’t there anymore. The shame and guilt have softened. I can see myself as a man doing his best, making mistakes along the way, and then doing what he can to repair what he broke. There’s a concept in the Jewish tradition called “Tikkun Olam” which means repairing the world. It acknowledges that baked into the world is some level of need for repair. I’m grateful for that recognition.

The best place to start with repairing the world is repair in the relationships I’m responsible for.

So, when I was in Charleston 2.5 years later and this camping trip flashed into my mind, I knew I had really healed something... This time around around I didn't loose my shit, this time around I didn't yell or get physical. Yes, I used a couple of low brow tactics to buy me some time until I arrived at the insight that he needed his feelings to be acknowledged. But the whole experience gives me hope.

We all carry stuff we've inherited. We've all been hurt and missattuned too. We all make mistakes with our children. But healing is possible and it does change us. And perhaps most importantly, it can cut off the flow of intergenerational pain.

Let us know if you want to learn more about this.

And in the meantime, keep steady.