Our Genes Have Emotional Memories Too

An old newspaper clipping posted in our family’s Facebook group made every cell in my body tingle. 

Published in the Humboldt, Iowa, local newspaper in 1921, the article described my great grandmother’s epic exodus from her war-torn Russian village to her safe arrival in her new American town. 

Here's an excerpt:

“Finally Mrs. Serber secured aid and six months ago succeeded in reaching Roumania. One of her daughters died, and Mrs. Serber and the remaining child finally reached Paris. Snuggling on their way, mother and daughter were helped to Belgium. She arrived in Antwerp and sailed on the steamer Lapland. After ten days at sea the mother and daughter were landed at Ellis Island.”

I already knew about my great grandmother’s horrific loss of her two-year-old daughter, Myala, who fell fatally ill during their treacherous journey over. But what I didn’t know, yet viscerally felt, was that my great grandmother had passed through Paris on her way to America. 

For as long as I’ve been irrationally obsessed with France I’ve wondered what hidden forces drew me to this culture, this country, and more specifically, Paris. 

Discovering that my great grandmother had once walked the City of Light's cobblestoned streets felt like a small clue. 

Maybe she loved the city, and wished she could return under different circumstances. 

Maybe she felt at home, but had to push on. 

Maybe something magical, or mysterious happened to her here. 

Maybe she saw the bustling boulevards filled with cafes and escaped her misery for a moment over coffee with some locals. 

In any case, I feel like she passed a Parisian seed through the family gene pool that germinated and blossomed inside of me.  

Often in my coaching a client is deeply attached to an emotion, narrative or system of beliefs that feels so entrenched that it could well be ancient history. 

In our exploration, we sometimes find that these feelings and thoughts have been transmitted invisibly over generations, like familiar hand-me-downs you’ve been wearing for years, but whose original owners are long gone. 

The latest research in epigenetics reveals that our genes have a “memory” and that unprocessed emotions and experiences can be transmitted from one generation to another. 

If you're curious like me  about the provenance of certain longings, behaviors and emotions, I highly recommend the riveting new non-fiction book, Emotional Inheritance. 

Written by Dr. Galit Atlas, an Israeli psychoanalyst who lives in New York, the book is presented as a fascinating series of therapy vignettes. In each chapter we go behind-the-scenes as Atlas and her patients unravel present-day problems by uncovering and processing emotional material that sometimes goes back generations. As Atlas explains "when we heal ourselves, we also begin to heal the generations that came before us: our parents; our grandparents; our great grandparents and beyond."

Run, don’t walk to pick up your copy.  It's one of the most thrilling, and mind-bending books I've read in years and I’m sure it will be made into a Netflix series! 

What Happened At The Doctor's

I sat in the doctor’s office waiting to get my varicose veins zapped. 

Notebook open, pen in hand, I was listening to a course about entrepreneurial expertise and had to answer the inevitable “why” question. Why do I coach? What’s my mission?

In that moment this is what I jotted down: 

“I empower women to hear, trust and share their unique gifts because the world needs them now more than ever.”

Minutes later, the door flung open, and my name was called. I unplugged my earbuds, put away my notebook and followed the doctor into his office. 

I had been to this doctor a few times already and knew he was chatty.

I took off my pants, laid down on my back, and he started asking me what I do for a living, what my husband does, etc. 

I gave him the same info as during my last two appointments, then for flair, mentioned that in addition to my husband’s job, he was very passionate about tennis. 

“Passionate about tennis? Why isn’t your husband passionate about you?” the doctor quipped. 

I laughed, uncomfortably.  

And then out of the blue he added. “If you want him to be passionate about you you’ll need to lose this,” and he gestured to the little bulge of skin sticking out between my panties and my t-shirt and pinched my belly between his fingers. 

My heart stopped. My pulse quickened. I looked down and felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. “Did he just say what I think he said?” “Is that my belly?” “Yes, that’s my belly.” “What’s it doing here?” 

As he injected chemicals into my legs, he continued on with his unsolicited commentary. “You need to wear sexier underwear,” he said, flicking the waistband of my panties disapprovingly, “you should do butt and ab exercises,” and “don’t forget to wax and get your nails done.” 

He concluded, triumphantly, that this protocol would ensure that “at the end of the day, your husband desires you more than his tennis.”

I kept silent throughout most of this rant, thinking to myself, “This can’t be happening!” “Is this a joke?” “Does he know we’re in 2022?” “I’m a women's empowerment coach, this garbage won’t work on me.”

But it wasn’t a joke. And even though I am a women’s empowerment coach who has the solid support of family, friends, a therapist, a coach and a battalion of personal development tools, I found myself ugly crying on the phone to my husband as soon as I got out of that office.

The doctor’s words hit a nerve. They ignited millennia of self-doubting, shaming feelings and thoughts about a woman’s body that I thought I was immune to. 

They made me feel self-conscious, ashamed, embarrassed, exposed and weak. 

They made me doubt my inherent beauty. My femininity. 

His words, despite their almost comically Mad Men sexism, were an overt attempt to convince me that there was something terrible wrong with me that needed fixing.


That my full-time job as a woman was to keep my body pleasing and desirable, and that I was failing at that job. 

And, as a result of my shortcomings, I should use my precious resources— my time, my energy, my money, my thoughts, my actions—not on my own choices, relationships, convictions, or aspirations, but on the impossible task of living up to an unachievable ideal of feminine perfection! 

No, doctor, I’m not buying your sexist, patriarchal bullshit. 

Even though I wish I had jumped off the table screaming profanities into his smug face, months later, << Test First Name >>, I appreciate the experience the way it did go down. 

It’s helped me have some really honest, powerful, and healing conversations, like my heart-to-heart with Lili Barbery Coulon on her podcast Pleine Présence (which you’re invited to listen to if you speak French). 

But the true gift of this experience is the heightened urgency and clarity I feel today around my mission as a coach. More than ever I feel like my place is to help women release the grip of limiting beliefs and feelings in order to step into their full professional potential, whatever that means for them. 

It’s the only way we can reverse course and dismantle a system that continues to subjugate a woman’s self-value, agency and dignity in order to strip her of her precious power. 

If that mission speaks to you, I'd be thrilled to chat with you during a free discovery call. 


PS. In case you missed my intimate chat in French with Lili Barbery Coulon on her podcast Pleine Présence, you can listen to it over here.  

Zeva and Rachel's Anxiety Cleanse for Trying Times

Before moving to France I worked as a film researcher in NYC. My job was to scour hours of archival images in search of that special slice of recorded history for commercials, news programs, comedy shows and documentary films. 

My team created highlight reels whenever we had extra time. They were like mini works of art—curated streams of the most salient images we could find on a specific, often-requested subject. 

I loved making those reels. My favorites were “Time-Lapse Nature,” “Race to the moon,” “Early New York City” and, of course, “1970s Fashion.” But there was one reel that I made that changed my life forever: the "WWII” reel. 

We had recently received an unusual collection of amateur home movies shot in color in the mid 1930s in Vienna. The movies were taken mostly outdoors and showed the members of the family strolling around town, past storefronts, going to the park, playing in the fields. 

What was remarkable about the collection was that the color was so vivid and sharp, like it had been filmed just yesterday.  

But beyond the mesmerizing quality of the movies was the shocking content in the background.
 

It was the first time in my life that I saw swastikas and Jewish hate graffiti in their original colorful context. I didn't realize how integrated into daily life those warning signs had been. 

The pain of knowing what happened to millions of innocent families, including my own, just several years after these home movies were made was so hard for my heart to process. I think at that moment, I convinced myself that I wouldn't miss such warning signs. That if something catastrophic started to build up in my world, and threaten everything and everyone precious to me, I would notice. I would know what to do. I would know where to go. 

Fast forward to these past few weeks and the horrific unfoldings in Ukraine. My anxiety has been at a feverish high, so much so that my brilliant friend, Rachel, and I decided to do an “anxiety cleanse” during a weekend away.

During the ritual I realized that the beliefs I forged decades ago as a way to protect my deepest survivalist fears have been triggered by the current events. 

I'm sharing the ritual with you below, because it was so helpful for the two of us to move through the squeezing grip of anxious thoughts and into a more productive place—to weep, to connect, to take action. The fear of a looming catastrophe is still there but it’s no longer choking me. I can visualize the thoughts now behind a door with a big "Miserable Hellscape" sign. I know where they come from and where they will lead me. But I feel like I can keep that door closed (for now, at least) so that more constructive thoughts come my way. 

Rachel and Zeva’s Anxiety Cleanse for Trying Times

What you’ll need:

• One hour of uninterrupted time. 

• A trusted companion you can share your inner-most fearful thoughts with. (Someone with a soft heart and a strong back who can handle what you present them with and carry your burdens with you)

• A few sheets of paper that you can tear up into strips. 

• Pens

• Tissues

• Matches

Step 1:

Connect with the anxious feelings in your body, then write each anxious thought down on a separate piece of paper. I started each slip with the cue “I’m anxious about…” and then filled in the rest. Write as many thoughts as you want. There’s no limit. You don’t need to understand them. To justify them. To trace their lineage. Just get them down on paper. By the time you get to step #2 you should feel empty, like there are no more thoughts hiding in the attic of your mind. 

Step 2: 

Once you and your companion each have a nice pile of anxious thoughts in front of you, put 15 minutes on the clock (you can always opt for more time) and choose who will be reading and who will be receiving. 

Step 3:

Start the timer, take a deep breathe, and then read each separate thought out loud. Let any emotions rise to the surface. If you need a moment to pause, to cry, to breathe, take it. Have your companion ask additional questions in a search for patterns. What overall theme is appearing amid the thoughts? If you had to combine them together, label them, give them a title, what would you call them? 

Step 4:

Have your companion ask what life would look like without these thoughts pressing into you? What would that space allow you to feel? What would that space allow you to express? What would that space allow you to do? Share what comes up. Write down anything you need. 

Step 5:

Reverse roles and repeat the same process so that you are now in the receiving/listening/questioning role as your companion shares.

Step 6:

Collect your pieces of paper and find a safe space to burn them. Say a little prayer, or mantra, before you burn the thoughts. This was our prayer: “We choose to release these anxious thoughts, many of which were passed to us by previous generations as a way to protect us. We acknowledge and celebrate their wisdom, but choose to release them in order to make space for new, more hopeful and empowering thoughts to emerge.” 

Step 7:

If you’re feeling inspired, you can take the ritual a step further, and paint or draw a picture for your companion that captures the theme or energy that came up during your beautiful time together.