A great-great-grandfather born enslaved on a Georgia plantation in 1828 set off a chain of inherited pressure to never rest. Epigenetics shows trauma passes through generations: cows shocked at a fence avoided it for years after, and their offspring did too. Breaking the cycle means recognizing these inherited narratives so you can finally pause.
Chapters
We're taught that you have to work hard, you have to grind, you have to achieve a certain status to live a certain life. My great-great-grandfather, who was born enslaved in Sparta, Georgia on the William Hurt Plantation in 1828, and we got a chance to go visit the plantation. And it was at that moment where I thought to myself, they didn't even have an opportunity to rest. There were times where they were forced, it was forced labor. They didn't have the opportunity To take some time and just say, I'm just going to sit and enjoy my life. And I started doing research on epigenetics and how genetics have an effect. And you know what's interesting? A lot of my coaching clients, women, people of color, first-generation professionals, have started to realize was it was really hard for them to take time to rest, to get their foot off the accelerator and just enjoy life. And I started to connect the dots here. And there's been some research and they connected this study epigenetically. And how it passes down. A lot of us feel like, because my ancestors sacrificed for me, because my family did this, I have to continue to work. I don't have time to rest. I read a book by Deepak Chopra called Super Genes, and he talks about epigenetics. There was a study on zapping cows. So they would put cows in this gated sort of fence, and each time the cow would go up and touch the fence, the cow would be electrocuted. So it was a gentle mental shock, right? So Pavlov's theory, the cows would not touch the gate anymore because of the pain that it would experience and register in its brain. So the cows had kids, okay? And the cows, the kids had never touched the gate. What they saw was the kids within the gate, they would not go up and touch the fence because epigenetically the trauma was passed down to the kids. They would actually take the electric wire off and they still would not go up and touch the fence. So this shows how trauma and as well as sort of our experiences of what our parents have been through can be passed down epigenetically.
