Intergenerational Trauma and Ancestral Pattern Shifting

Source: Courtesy of Cynthia Tom, artist and founding director of PLACE

“To emerge from the culture of silence is to find one's voice, to rewrite the self and to become visible.” – Leny Mendoza Strobel, in her book Babaylan

A PLACE OF HER OWN, or PLACE, an art collective of women and people who are non-male-identified, recently opened its latest gallery exhibit at J-SEI in Emeryville, California. PLACE empowers participants by helping them engage in culturally conscious art-making through self-reflection, found objects, and community formation. This 2024 exhibit features 24 multiethnic individuals (Asian American, Indigenous, and Latinx) committed to healing, in a variety of media, most of them using found objects to relate stories of intergenerational and cultural trauma and emotional transmissions. There were three cohorts represented: a 2020 group from the Bay Area, a 2023 group from the Central Valley (with 7GEN as the community partner), and a 2024 group with the Korean Community Center East Bay Clinical Therapy Program (YBCA Creative Corp project).

The artist talk held on August 18, 2024, left audience members and artists in tears as we received journeys and reflections on family, trauma, and cultural oppressions. (More on PLACE here, and link to a gallery of photos of the current exhibit here.)

I sat down with my friend, founding director, artist, curator, and workshop leader Cynthia Tom to discuss PLACE. The video interview is appended below, and this is an edited, excerpted transcript.

Tell me about A PLACE OF HER OWN.

A PLACE OF HER OWN is a lot of different things. Mainly art-based workshops, lectures, and art exhibitions using found objects to work through ancestral patterns of trauma and release it using art or at least become conscious of it.

What is “ancestral pattern shifting"?

It’s looking at anything that brings you chronic heartache, but not looking at it as if it’s “just yours.” It comes from a long line of coping mechanisms for traumatic things that have happened to your family over the generations. If you begin to look at what happened to your family…why did they come here, or why did they leave for unknown places? And what are the coping mechanisms they developed? As the generations go on, it self-implodes into addiction, violence, alcoholism, and, for women, impostor syndrome, not feeling like you’re good enough, serve everyone before yourself. You’re taught all these things to cope with whatever your ancestors had to deal with—colonization, forced migration, and extreme discrimination, to mention a few.

What is the quality of receiving these transmissions—what I call divine reception or, perhaps, divining?

Most of the women will tell you they’ve never received support, they’ve never had people ask how are they feeling, or “What’s this feeling about?” So many of them have expressed not feeling so held or hugged. Today they’re hugging each other. They’re learning to receive abundance and kindness.

How do people relate to the difficult parts of their own journeys?

One is admitting it, accepting it, putting your finger on it. And we do that from a lot of talking and prompts using art. Deliberate art that brings in a thought process, done in community. So you learn to share the really hard stuff, and you learn you’re not alone.

Tell me about the creative process.

We’re using beliefs that hold you back. You write those horrible beliefs that you are buying into on rocks and carry them around for a week, and then come together and talk about the experience. There’s humor in the trauma. There’s humor in how you treat your rocks. And it always surprises people. And then to create the artwork with found objects on purpose. Anybody can create art. If you’re using found objects, you don’t have to have any art experience. In this exhibit, we have many artists who have never done anything before. We ask, “If you had a place of your own, what would it be?” Then found objects just show up to people, and they create their art around it.

Does the creative expression aid in healing?

For me, it’s the only way you can. [Cynthia gave an example of an artist in the show who inadvertently had to deal with her own perfectionism as she tried to work on shame. She did this through improvisation and play based on the accidents that happened in the creative process.]

Tell me about your own works in the exhibit.

I paint from a surreal place to keep my expectations and limitations open. So you’re not closed off when people give you suggestions.

What do you do to rest?

I listen to music now. And I have days where I don’t have anything on the calendar, on purpose. Recently I have been listening to Toto, "A Thousand Years" and "The Little Things."

Trauma Essential Reads

The Promise of MDMA-Assisted Therapy for Healing Trauma

Supporting the Mental Health of Paramedics

Thank you!

Cynthia Tom for A PLACE OF HER OWN. Healing trauma through ancestral pattern shifting. 8/18/2024

© Ravi Chandra, M.D., D.F.A.P.A.