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Table of Contents

Introduction: Ripe with Possibility

Rhythm 1: Protect the Temple—Honoring the Self
Chapter 1: Growing Through It
Chapter 2: Heavy Monsters
Chapter 3: Looking for Love
Interlude 1: Trauma in the Branches of the Family Tree
Chapter 4: Inching Toward Freedom

Rhythm 2: Practice Forgiveness—Radical Compassion
Chapter 5: Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences
Interlude 2: Ripple Effects
Chapter 6: If God Is Good, Then Why Did This Happen?
Chapter 7: When Healing Has Legs

Rhythm 3: Lean In to the Struggle—Everyday Courage
Chapter 8: On a Path to Change
Chapter 9: The Roots of Family Trauma
Chapter 10: Tear Down to Build Up
Chapter 11: Whiffs of Grace

Rhythm 4: Get Real—Soul Honesty
Interlude 3: Daisies and Breaking Hearts
Chapter 12: Our Stories Are Bigger
Chapter 13: Puddles of Mascara
Chapter 14: Doing Hard Things

Rhythm 5: Let God—Living Open-Handed
Chapter 15: Golden Refuse
Chapter 16: From Silence to Story
Interlude 4: Take Back the Night
Chapter 17: Rhythms of Disruption
Interlude 5: Free
Conclusion: Grace Does
Interlude 6: Grave Dancing
Appendix: Resilience Practices

Introduction: Ripe with Possibility

When I found out I was pregnant, I had to sit down. The chair I fell into was a reupholstered antique that had once belonged to my great-grandmother. I never knew much about her other than her husband was a farmer who looked (in the one picture I saw of him) like Ryan Gosling in The Notebook, only with real farmer biceps—the kind of muscles that pull soldiers up out of foxholes. I stared at the pregnancy stick my work friend said I should drive to Walgreens to buy because that’s what women do when they miss their period. I grabbed onto the smooth wooden arms of the chair, the arms that my ancestor had rested her own hands on. I looked down at the rough, gold material that was selected to cover over the coils and puffs of whatever is on the inside of these old chairs. I didn’t think this was something I’d ever do—buy a pregnancy test. I had been married for only six weeks. I didn’t think I could even have children. I’d had enough unsafe sex to have birthed a football team by then. But I took the test (because that’s what women do, my friend said). And I waited there for almost an hour with a towel covering the little window of results.

Despite things being pretty amazing by this point in my life and recovery, considering all the trauma, brokenness, and years of unhealthy patterns I’d lived through, I still tiptoed around life. Even though, six weeks before, I had walked down the aisle to Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline,” surprising the heck out of my family. Even though they all sang along as I smiled through tears of joy and looked toward a stable, handsome, driven, and smart green-eyed man.* Somewhere inside, I still harbored the secret thought that God was going to disappoint me. That I was going to disappoint me. I’d be able to yell, “See! I knew I couldn’t trust you!” “See, your trauma is too much.” “You are too much.”

Our early October wedding was a dream, with the kind of wind that kicks up Lake Michigan in a beautiful frenzy. A dusting of yellow leaves and fading hydrangeas adorned the ceremony of only a few close family and friends. I wore a dress that was way puffier than I had envisioned. My longing for something sleek and classy and crème flew out the window as soon as I tried on this once-in-a-lifetime gown that made me feel like a combination between Xena the Warrior Princess and a giant tulle cupcake. We picked out the flowers the morning of the ceremony at a small floral shop where the owner looked on, disgusted (apparently wedding parties picking out flowers in the morning for that afternoon’s wedding is looked down upon). My best person and I made our bouquets on the gray-marbled kitchen counter of an Airbnb right before driving to the old white farmhouse where the hunky physicist and I said our vows under the most glorious tree I’d ever seen, with gray branches reaching toward the heavens. I was the happiest warrior cupcake ever. But even as it was happening in real time, I couldn’t believe that it was happening for me (it meaning a “normal life”).

Just like the moment I sat on the edge of the gold chair that had so lovingly cradled my ancestors’ butts and stared at the stick I had just peed on. I kept shaking my head no. I kept looking at it and then reading the instructions again. One line – not pregnant. Two lines = pregnant. Do I have one line or two? I looked down. Two. Wait. Is that . . . ? (Reading the box again.) One line – not pregnant. Two lines = pregnant. TWO?! Once it finally sank in, I jumped up and sat down, then walked around as if in a trance—an “I can’t believe I am pregnant! Am I pregnant?!” stupor. I smiled the half smile of someone who wasn’t quite sure if I should be happy. Is this going to last? The fear already creeping in.

But I was—I was ridiculously happy. I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe that I actually got pregnant. I had always had an inkling that if I was able to have kids, I would have had them by then—out of wedlock, as I so bluntly alluded to earlier. Plus, I’d had my share of sexually transmitted infections that can impact a woman’s ability to conceive, or so Google informed me. I praised God. I cried. I praised God again. A snippet of a quote from one of my favorite authors, Brennan Manning, came to mind: “Freedom brings an appreciation for the lessons of captivity.”^1 Then I wondered what the hell I was going to do.

My husband was away on a work trip in San Diego doing some important sciencey stuff that I still can’t explain. He wouldn’t be home until around midnight when I was supposed to meet him at the airport. So, I decided to do what many women do when we find out we’re pregnant: I went shopping. I strolled the baby aisle and brushed my fingers against soft muslin and plush blankets and the teeniest, tiniest onesies and miniature gloves and hats and little slippers with the heads and ears of forest creatures like bunnies and foxes and bears. Around me were other women who looked like me. Some were either starry-eyed with tight tummies or a little more drained-looking with basketballs in their shirts. Then there were the women I couldn’t yet make eye contact with who looked like someone had sucked their insides out with a straw, with one baby tugging a breast, another in a stroller, and one pulled along by the armpit.

It was winter, just before Christmas, so I found the most adorable tiny faux leather boots with off-white fluff coming out the top. Both shoes fit on one of my open hands. I stared at these tiny shoes. There was going to be a little human in these shoes (I did not know yet that there were going to be two little humans). I searched the clothing and tried to find something gender neutral. Not too frilly. I found a forest green and navy long-sleeved onesie that said something about going on a journey. This moment was like coming out of a strange wilderness. God showed up again. Despite my fear and unbelief. Despite my doubt that good things were going to keep happening, God showed up in a heart-wrenchingly beautiful way: I was pregnant. I couldn’t stop saying it.

On the way home from picking Matt up at the airport, I was so nervous I could barely breathe in the car. I had to roll the window down, and the night air wafted in. Deep breaths. You can do this. I didn’t exactly know what I was going to do. How was I going to say it? When should I tell him? We drove the familiar path back to our small rented house. Matt talked about his work, but I could tell he was tired from being on a plane for hours, still adjusting to having feet on the ground. We arrived and the dogs greeted us. Matt set his bag down and went to the bathroom. This was my chance. Even though he was exhausted and I was unsure, I decided I had to tell him. Immediately. I took out the little boots and set them against the wall near the front door where the rest of our shoes were lined up. I smiled. This was really happening. When he came upstairs, I led him to the doorway and pointed. I couldn’t even say the words.

He looked at me in shock. That was the beginning of everything. At that moment, I realized that we can be part of a new story. We are not our trauma.

–

Olive trees stand apart from each other like distant lovers. The thick trunks lead into a chaotic crisscross of limbs and grayish-brown question marks. It isn’t a blissful picture with angelic clouds and a rainbow of flowers. Instead, a grove of olives is straight out of a scene from Lord of the Rings when you know everything is about ready to go to hell. Mature olive trees are eerily beautiful though. In all their mangledness, there is something about them: Strength? Life? Hope? What appears from the tips of the most distorted branches is a verdancy that surprises: a flutter of grassy green and a glint of yellow in the light, like a clapping Colorado aspen.

Russell Stafford is a self-proclaimed “hortiholic and plant evangelist” and wrote an article called “Specimen Trees and Shrubs with Elegantly Twisted Branches.” In it, he talks about a number of trees, like the olive, that are zigged and zagged from the main trunk. Stafford writes, “Some trees are just twisted—literally. Rather than growing in the usual linear pattern, their stems crazily zig and zag, each segment veering in a different direction from the previous one.”^2 He goes on to talk about a variety of crooked trees like the scarlet curls willow, contorted beech, and dragon’s claw willow. They each have branches that twist and curl and do backflips into the sky. They are characterized by “whimsically erratic angles” and “theatrically wild silhouettes,” according to Stafford. There is less pattern and regularity. No predictability. Yet something about them makes them stand out. Makes you stare. Wonder. They are lovely. Hardy. Add variance to the landscape. These trees, like the olive, make you stop and think and (for people like me) wonder at the God who created such variety. Such beauty from the misshapen.

My own life has been like this: a branch from a family tree that is as bent and meandering as a dragon mulberry. I have wandered into painful scenes, my own personal Garden of Gethsemane, surrounded by a family that is less than perfect. Family that is twisted. Struggling. Absent. I, too, have asked questions in this garden and struggled my way to recover from trauma: death, divorce, addiction, and sexual violence. I asked God, “If you are really here, why do you allow such things?” Let this cup pass from me. I have asked aloud, “Where is God when it hurts?” And I have wondered in secret why some families are sturdy like oak trees and mine is slow to grow and low to the ground.* Yet I’ve also experienced the other side of the questions. Where the light hits just so and dances on the forest floor. Where a garden of questions is transformed into a prairie of peace. The place where I know God has a plan and a purpose. And the plan and purpose are good. Thy will be done.

As a now East Tennessean, I’ve looked out my window at the towering ash and cedar trees around us and marveled at their strength. How when the wind sweeps through the mountain ridges, only the tops of the branches sway. Roots twisted below, stretching in and out among the rock, they get water and nutrient-rich soil wherever they can. Making it against all odds. Born to be resilient. Created for recovery.

The journey we are about to go on together is an exploration into the concept of intergenerational or family trauma and how it can nestle into the branches of our family trees without our even being aware of it. This book is also a journey of recovery through trauma and its symptoms and unhealthy patterns that mirror my mother’s story with uncanny particularity (you’ll see why in a bit). Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, the preeminent researcher on trauma, says that regardless of the specifics, most of us are survivors of trauma in some form. Most of us, to live healthy lives and make healthy choices, need to learn how to “develop a mind that heals.”^3 We must learn how to have compassion for our stories. Even if the specifics of our stories are different, we can relate to one another. Even if your idea of recovery is different from mine, we no doubt have something in our pasts or in our families’ pasts that keeps us from living the lives we dream of. My mother and I invite you into our stories so that you can see yours, perhaps, in a new way.

Over time, I’ve come to believe that we can gain the ability to see our stories and our experiences with new eyes. By searching the past for clues, we can discover how the muck of our own lives resembles, in some ways, that of our mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, or other family members. And importantly, we can learn that we don’t have to stay stuck there. We can move into a place where we feel safe in our own bodies, where we can hold our stories with compassion and hope. We can choose healing today for our children’s tomorrow. We don’t have to identify with our trauma any longer.

I’ve also uncovered, along a recovery journey, that we should ask these questions: What is it about our family trees that allows particular forms of trauma to spread like a disease? Why do some of our lineages foster hardships like sexual trauma, addiction

 

Buy Here: Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Lake Drive Direct | BooksaMillion | Audible | Apple Books