By Dr. Veronica Dumas, Psy.D., featured in Miami Shores Living Magazine
Published on 11/05/26
Thanksgiving happens to be my favorite holiday of the entire year. Not only is it an opportunity for people to come together and create community, but it also highlights one of the most important tools for positive mental wellness: gratitude. In addition to the wonderful food that we share with others, we also bring to the table all of the emotional baggage we carry.
We bring with us, our parents, our grandparents, and the generations that came before them. We carry their stories, their fears, their losses, their way of loving, and sometimes their inability to love us in the way we needed them to. We bring with us generations of struggles, coping mechanisms, traumas, and cultural traditions.
As a psychologist, I hear people say things like: “My mother is just too anxious, she stresses me out”, “My father has always been angry, I can’t stand being around him”, or “In my family feelings are not talked about”.
But I’m always interested in what came before. Why was your mother always anxious? What happened to your father that made anger easier than vulnerability? Why did an entire family learn not to talk about difficult things? Why does cynicism or sarcasm become an accepted way to talk to each other?
Sometimes what we attribute to someone as their personality, is actually a way of surviving or adapting to extremely difficult circumstances.
What did you inherit?
Intergenerational trauma is the idea that trauma doesn’t necessarily end with the person who experienced it. We pass things down through the way we parent, the way we love, what we talk about and what we don’t. We pass down fears, expectations and ways of responding to stress.
Science is also exploring this through Epigenetics: how experiences and environments can affect the way certain genes are expressed. It’s a fascinating area of research, but it does not mean that what happened to your grandmother determines who you become. What we inherit is not our destiny.
Understanding where something comes from actually gives us a choice. Is this mine? Is it still serving me? Do I want to keep carrying it? Do I want to do the work that it takes to process it and not pass it down to the next generation?
Family of Origin
This is a distinction I often make with my patients. There is your family of origin and then there is your family. Sometimes, they are the same, and sometimes they are not.
Your family of origin is the family you were born into. You didn’t choose them. They may have loved you beautifully or they may have hurt you, or most likely a combination of both. But as adults, we get to create a family. That may be your spouse and children or in some cases it may be relatives, friends, cousins, neighbors, and community. The people who show up for you and the people you choose to show up for. Blood creates relatives. It doesn’t necessarily create emotional safety, intimacy or connection.
So this Thanksgiving maybe gratitude can be a little more complicated. We can be grateful for what was good and honest about what was not. We can understand what our parents went through without excusing behavior that hurt us. We can love our family of origin while creating something different.
And maybe as we sit around the table, we can ask ourselves the following questions:
What emotional baggage did I inherit?
What am I ready to put down?
And what do I want to pass on to the next generation?
We don’t get to choose what was handed to us. But we do get to choose what we carry forward.
If you or someone you know is struggling with relationship issues, remember that you don’t have to do it alone. At Baypoint Counseling Center, our team helps people move through life’s most challenging emotions with greater resilience, clarity, and hope. Visit us at www.baypointcounseling.com for more details.
About The Author: Dr. Veronica Dumas, Psy.D., is the founder of Baypoint Counseling Center and a Licensed Clinical Psychologist with more than 30 years of experience in the mental health field. She works with individuals and couples, helping them navigate relationship challenges, life transitions, and opportunities for personal growth, with specialized expertise in intensive couples therapy.
