Honor the Dead to Support the Living

By: Dr. Denise Renye

“Sometimes our parents are full of love and sometimes they are full of anger. This love and anger comes not only from them, but from all previous generations. When we can see this, we no longer blame our parents for our suffering.”
― Thich Nhat Hanh 

This time of the year, the veils are the thinnest, some say. It's the witchiest time of the year as we are halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. The darkness is longer than the light and it's a prime time to reflect on our ancestors, life, and death. Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead) is a holiday that originated in Mexico but has conceptual and psychological relevance for everyone, no matter where they’re from. The holiday honors ancestors and it should be noted our ancestors, even the long-buried ones, influence the living in a myriad of ways.   

That influence is genetic – hair color, stature, whether cilantro tastes like soap – but it’s also emotional and psychological. Carl Jung wrote in Memories, Dreams, Reflections that,

“I feel very strongly that I am under the influence of things or questions which were left incomplete and unanswered by my parents and grandparents and more distant ancestors. It often seems as if there were an impersonal karma within a family, which is passed on from parents to children. It has always seemed to me that I had to . . . complete, or perhaps continue, things which previous ages had left unfinished.”

Jung had a “feeling” but now we have scientific evidence (at least on the genetic level) proving he was right. The field of epigenetics studies changes in organisms caused by the modification of gene expression rather than alteration of the genetic code itself. In 2013, scientists discovered certain odors with a traumatic history would trigger a stress response in mice of succeeding generations. Researchers subjected one generation of mice to odor fear-conditioning before conception and found that even their offspring two generations down had an increased behavioral sensitivity to the conditioned odor, but not to other odors. 

Also in 2013, an Israeli paper revealed the traumas of World War II are showing up in the genes of Holocaust descendants. “Instead of numbers tattooed on their forearms, they may have been marked epigenetically with a chemical coating upon their chromosomes, which would represent a kind of biological memory,” said the paper’s author, Natan Kellerman.

Another epigenetic researcher, Dr. Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and the director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine has studied this topic extensively. She said during an interview in 2015:

“There are two ways to influence the next generation – at least. One way is to directly transmit something that you have, and you transmit it in the form that you have it. So, let’s say a change has been made onto your DNA – an epigenetic mark now sits on a promoter region of your gene, for example. And through the magic of meiosis, that mark gets transmitted through the act of reproduction. The cell divides, there’s reproduction, and the change sticks, and it’s present in the next generation. That’s one thing. That’s a transmitted change. There’s another kind of change that involves giving your child – either at conception or in utero or post-conception – a set of circumstances, and the child is forced to make an adaptation to those circumstances.”

She found that descendants of Holocaust survivors had the same neuroendocrine or hormonal abnormalities viewed in the Holocaust survivors themselves as well as people with post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s clear what happened to our ancestors is not long forgotten but instead imprinted on our brains and bodies.

Let us be curious about those who have gone before us, who have transitioned from this earthly realm. What were their lives like? What did they experience? How are we still connected to them? Consider creating an altar with pictures of your ancestors as a way of honoring them.

Death is inevitable and something that we will all experience. Not only the “big death” at the end of our lives, but also smaller deaths like the end of a relationship, losing a furry companion, or letting go of a behavior. Getting comfortable with death now, and taking time during the year to think of the deceased, has great potential for healing and integration – not only for you, but future generations.

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References

Dias, Brian J; Ressler, Kerry J. “Parental olfactory experience influences behavior and neural structure in subsequent generations.” Nature Neuroscience, December 1, 2013. https://www.nature.com/articles/nn.3594

Kellerman, Natan. “Epigenetic transmission of Holocaust trauma: Can nightmares be inherited?” The Israeli Journal of Psychiatry and Related Sciences. 2013, Vol. 50:1, pp. 33-39. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24029109/

Tippett, Krista. “Rachel Yehuda: How Trauma and Resilience Cross Generations.” On Being, July 30, 2015. https://onbeing.org/programs/rachel-yehuda-how-trauma-and-resilience-cross-generations-nov2017/