Intergenerational Trauma & The Irish Legacy

Intergenerational trauma, also known as transgenerational or multigenerational trauma, is becoming more widely understood, particularly through the study of epigenetics. In honour of St. Patrick's Day and my Irish heritage, I wanted to share just a few broad-stroke insights on how trauma is passed down through generations. While today St. Patrick's Day is a happy celebration, it has colonialism at its roots.

More and more research reveals that trauma from abuse, violence, loss, and also poverty, oppression, and racism are passed down from generation to generation. The Washington Post has an article about "The Cherry Blossom Experiment" which talks about this.

One of the most powerful aspects of my own healing journey was recognizing the trauma I inherited from my family ancestry. As an Irish descendant and first-generation Canadian, I learned about the oppression faced by the Irish people for centuries under the British Empire. Ireland was Britain's first and oldest colony, being invaded in the 12th century. The Irish were considered inferior due to their culture and later due to their Roman Catholic faith, and were discriminated against — including being banned from owning land.

By the time the Irish Potato Famine struck in 1845, the Irish were already impoverished and marginalized. The potato, which had been introduced as a cheap and easy-to-grow food, was their main sustenance. When the crop failed, they had nothing. But the unfortunate truth is, as the late Sinéad O'Connor — Irish singer, songwriter, and activist — boldly stated: "there was no famine." Yes, the potato crops failed, but there was no shortage of food. In the book The History of Ireland by Desmond McGuire, he relays that troops were used to prevent starving people from seizing food destined for export. The so-called "Potato Famine" was an act of deliberate neglect born of centuries of oppression.

In his article in Medium "Was Ireland's Great Famine a Genocide?" Cailian Savage states: "Irish peasants acted rationally within a system that afforded them almost no rights, and the fundamental unsustainability of their way of life was a direct consequence of foreign rule."

Solutions to the famine included pressuring the Irish to convert from Catholicism to Protestantism for food from soup kitchens, or subjecting them to forced labour for meagre wages. The so-called famine led to the deaths of approximately one million people, while at least another million were forced to emigrate — only to face further racism in new lands. The decades that followed brought the Irish Revolution, the Irish Civil War, and eventually both World Wars. My parents didn't emigrate from Ireland until the early 1960s. My great-grandfather briefly emigrated to work on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City but returned to Ireland, where he bought a farm that's still in the McQuinn family today. He is the man in the photograph of this blog post, my grandfather as a boy standing next to him.

"Pain travels through families until someone is ready to feel it… Pain demands to be felt. And somewhere along the line, a child will be born whose charge it is to feel it all." — Stephi Wagner

Understanding the impact of generational trauma has been an essential key to my own healing. While it's not easy to confront the pain passed down through the family line, it's empowering, and I attribute my own recovery to the strength my ancestors passed down as incredible courage, resilience, and steadfastness. In her article "How Ireland Served as a Laboratory for the British Empire," Jane Ohlmeyer, a Trinity College Dublin Professor, states that Ireland also served as an exemplar for resistance to imperial rule, inspiring freedom fighters across multiple empires, and that today it might serve as a template for peace. (Available on the Trinity College Dublin website.)

Every group of people has their own history of trauma. Knowing your personal history can help you open your heart to others. It's not about comparing who had it worse; it's about honouring your own pain while holding space for the suffering of others. As author Kyle Gray puts it: "You are the answer to your ancestor's prayers." But this is not easy to do. Our nervous systems want to protect us from ever seeing the pain. It takes tremendous courage and honesty. And it's important to realize that the trauma that gets passed down is not always grief, fear, or shame. In some cases, it can be arrogance or a sense of entitlement. As psychologist Ramani Durvasula writes in her Psychology Today article "The Delusion of Meritocracy and the Culture of Entitlement," speaking about admissions in elite universities: "Entitlement is an inter-generational game — it gets passed down from one generation to the next like a pocket watch."

Unfortunately, history continues to repeat itself across the globe. People are still being judged, made to feel inferior, starved, attacked, and even killed because of their religion, gender, race, culture, mental health, or sexual orientation. And this only ensures the cycle of trauma continues.

Any form of suppression or judgment is an act of inhumanity. It's an attack on people's freedom, dignity, and very souls. As a society and a world, we must learn to treat everyone as human beings — because we are all part of the same human family. For as long as anyone hurts, we all hurt on some level.

"Human enlightenment will only be achieved when every person in the world knows how to regulate their nervous system." — Peter Levine

Regulating the nervous system is not about taking deep breaths and avoiding the trauma we hold. It is a heart journey of courage, emotional honesty, and feeling. Opening yourself to the reality of intergenerational trauma is a gateway to deep healing. When we acknowledge the pain passed down to us, we begin the process of liberation — not just for ourselves, but for future generations. In honouring both the suffering and the resilience of our ancestors, we heal the wounds of the past and create space for new growth.

Gra Mór (Big Love), Michele

Written by Michele Venema BScN, RN, Psychotherapist, cEFT2 AEFTP
Nurse Psychotherapist/EFT Practitioner

From Shadows to SoulLight Counselling