A Mother's Grief Became a Daughter's Struggle with Food

Our ancestors’ experiences get passed down to us, along with the color of our hair, our height and our general personality traits. This is what we call intergenerational trauma, or ancestral wounds.

Today I want to share the story of a client who inherited her mother's lifelong struggle with food.

We'll call her Emilia.

Emilia first came to see me because she wanted support around her weight and "creating sustainable practices that nourished" her in the long term. She had tried many different diets over the years and felt "stuck in a cycle of negative thought patterns" around food and her body.

Not only had Emilia tried many diets, she had also studied health coaching. In other words, she wasn't feeling "stuck" because she didn't know what to eat. She absolutely knew what to do, but she was starting to realize there might be something deeper to all of it.

I asked Emilia about her story with food, and this was among the first things she said:

"My mom is a compulsive overeater… she has been her whole life.  My family culture is very judgmental, assessing how you look the minute you walk into a room.  For a long time I had gotten to a place where all of that was manageable... [but now it isn't]"

"The reality is that my relationship with my mother is work. I love her dearly and we can have good connection, but I struggle in that relationship."

Emilia told me the story of her parents, who both grew up in a very strict, very judgmental community. Their childhoods had been difficult, and there often wasn't enough food. So once food was easily available, eating became a way to feel safe.

Her mother had struggled with compulsive eating her entire life, and she had also been a chronic dieter.

Her relationship with her mom became more challenging as Emilia became interested in healthy eating. Whenever she visited her mother or attended family gatherings, her choices were questioned and often put to the test:

"Overeating is something my family does as a group activity; there will be 14 full desserts for 10 people… and because of the scarcity mindset everybody has to have every dessert. I sometimes feel kind of stuck; it’s too much to overcome, being the only one trying to not do that... so I stopped spending holidays with my family because of the food. My mom is a food pusher… her relationship with food was a model in the house."

I asked more about her mom's pattern, and Emilia explained that her mother would binge as a way to feel better. Then she would say, "I'm so naughty... I have no willpower," and start a new diet. And the cycle would begin again.

Emilia explained that her mom would "stuff her sadness with food." Her deepest sadness came from having had a baby before she was married. Because of her strict upbringing, her parents forbade her from telling anyone, and she was forced to give the baby up for adoption.

Emilia's mom was not only shamed for having become pregnant, she also then experienced the deep grief from losing her baby.

So she ate.

To soothe herself.

To quiet the sadness... year after year.

Three years later, Emilia was born, and this profound wound was passed down to her.

As we spoke about it, Emilia realized how true it felt that she had been carrying her mother's grief. And she had learned to follow her mom's eating and dieting pattern too.

We began the work of moving through the grief to bring closure and healing to those ancestral memories. We did this through an NLP process called a Timeline, a guided, interactive process that works with how a memory lives in the mind.

We went back to the time of her mother's pregnancy with her first child.

In a Timeline, we bring the resources that were not present at the time of the painful events.

Emilia was able to identify what her mom had needed back then: support from her family, unconditional love, to feel listened to without judgment, and to feel included in her community. Through NLP tools, we helped Emilia access all of those feelings and resources, and then offer them to her mother within that memory.

As we did this, she began to have a bodily experience of what it would have been like for her mother to receive that support. In doing this, we were creating a new version of the original events that gave birth to the grief, which later gave rise to the overeating.

Of course, all of this took place within Emilia's mind, in her inner representation of the memory. Her conscious mind knows it didn't happen in the "real world." But the way we hold a memory inside can change, and when it does, our relationship to painful events and old patterns can change too.

Emilia created a new inner image where her mother received the love and support she desperately needed but had not received in the original story. It didn't change the past. What it changed was how Emilia relates to the story.

When we were done with the timeline, Emilia's simple comment was, "wow, that was really powerful."

Over the next few weeks, Emilia became acutely aware of how profoundly her mother's story had been alive within her all along, and how that grief had always been the primary force behind her chronic mindless snacking and overeating.

She also started to feel a greater compassion for her mother and all of her losses. She could see her mother's attempt to control was her way of holding tightly to those she loved so as to not lose another child.

In our following sessions we continued to dissolve the remaining charge of her mom's story within Emilia's life. We used EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) and other tools.

At the end of our work together, Emilia said she no longer felt obsessed with being on a "plan" (in other words, a diet) and instead was learning how to be healthy without a forced structure.

Emilia had become free of her mother's cycle of bingeing and dieting. Importantly, she was learning to practice healthy habits that emerged from loving herself rather than from trying to fight or control her body.

Emilia said,

"I'm giving up the idea of doing a program and choosing to simply love myself."

Healing the ancestral grief she'd carried since birth allowed Emilia to let go of compulsive eating, rather than forcing herself into another diet.

She found deeper love and compassion not only for herself, but for her mother as well.  If emotional eating feels like a battle you keep losing, it may not be about willpower at all. Sometimes what we carry isn't only ours.