By Beverly Hubble Tauke, M.S.W. 1995
 Responding to a gentle nudge on my arm, I turned and found sensitive octogenarian eyes peering at me from below a ring of white curls. This grandmotherly sort was older than most of those attending my Northern Virginia workshop on generational family dysfunctions and their causes and resolutions.
“I want to tell you what happened after years of anger at my husband,” she said quietly.
“Yes,” I nodded. “Tell me.”
“He always refused to discipline our sons, dumping that duty on me. Exasperated, one day I asked how his father had disciplined him.”
“Excellent question. What did he say?” I queried.
“He said that when his father got really mad, he’d line the children against the wall. Then he’d pull out his gun, point it at them, and announce, ‘The next one who disobeys, this is what you get!’”
Never fully inured to the human capacity to inflict trauma, I mentally juggled conflicting images of this gentle woman before me, and the horror she described.
“My view of my husband changed — immediately.”
She had considered her husband an irresponsible derelict, abdicating roles of father and husband. But a few seconds of hearing about his experience with his own father radically transformed her husband’s image in her mind.
While avoiding his father’s abuses, this man lurched to an opposite extreme, with risky consequences for his wife and a new generation. But irresponsible derelict he was not. He seemed at his core a terrified kid, for whom the very thought of discipline unleashed new waves of anguish. Understanding this transformed his wife’s bitterness into compassion, resurrecting long-dormant warmth in the marriage and family.
“What a powerful illustration of what we’re doing here!” I responded.
During 10 hours spanning four Saturdays, this group of 100 would explore family history as a potent prism for better understanding themselves, their mates and the merging of both of their histories to shape generations downstream.
This winsome grandmother had made the point in 60 seconds, becoming another marker in an adventure launched years ago during my Master of Social Work studies at CUA. At that time, I began using the work of family-systems pioneer Murray Bowen as my own clinical rudder — particularly his claim that couples who confront family-of-origin issues make faster, more profound progress in marriage repair and marriage quality than those in traditional marriage counseling. While an unusually telescoped example, the Falls Church grandmother added to my stockpile of Bowen affirmations.
Privileged to share thousands of journeys in psychotherapeutic and workshop settings, I’ve seen family-history scrutiny transform far more than marriage. During another Virginia workshop series, a prominent pastor confided that, despite a Christian conversion experience in his youth, he had not been able to stop hating his mother for her many years of cruelty.
“Then I observed my grandparents treat her viciously,” he said. “Instantly, I got it. She was dishing out what she got. Her behavior wasn’t so much because she hated her own kids, but that she was herself so wounded.”
“How did the new insight affect you?” I asked.
“I treated her with more compassion.”
“And?”
And … finding a new refuge in her son’s heart soon led this mother to embrace the Christian faith that had given him hope and comfort. Her life and relationships were transformed — a process launched by her son’s mind-rattling confrontation with ancestor realities.
Given my work with some church communities suspicious of “psycho-babble,” it is most helpful that Moses, as it happens, anticipated and confirms Bowen’s conclusions. “Confess your own errors plus the sins of your ancestors … and God will restore his blessing on your family.” That’s my take on Leviticus 26:40-45, where Moses links an honest inventory of the family tree to spiritual vitality and family well-being.
One of the settings where such concepts have produced striking results is a residential mission program for homeless men at Washington, D.C.’s Gospel Rescue Ministries. Some of the men there have traced generations without a father present, perhaps not since slavery ripped husband from wife, parent from child, sibling from sibling.
Driven by their own parent-hunger and their reflection on generations of absent fathers, many of these men have defied fear of rejection to connect with their own stranger-children. Fearing that his homeless state would surely repel a rediscovered daughter, one dad was startled when the teenager not only embraced him but begged him to join her weekly studies in a public library. Another connection-seeking dad found a train ticket in the mail from his daughter, so he could visit her young family in nearby Baltimore. Emerging from the train, he nodded to the young woman who was surely his daughter — the one who promptly collapsed into the arms of her husband, overwhelmed at the sight of a father she had never known. Their weekend together became a true reunion, building bonds of mutual care despite such delayed connection.
Years later, such men report stable work, housing and relationships, with some advancing to professional careers or into college or graduate degree programs. By their own reports, they were recalibrated partly by excursions into their family histories.
Ancestor-driven epiphanies have revolutionized my own journey, as well. During one Gospel Rescue Ministries workshop, this unbidden thought came forcefully to my mind: “Polio gave you a different father.” Unnerved by this “random thought,” as my kids would call it, I also recognized a profound reality.
My big-hearted father was quite an internalizing loner, as is common with male descendants of male alcoholics. Our family tree bore such luminaries as distant cousin Edwin P. Hubble, the famed astronomer, but our own poor branch took a sharp diversion with Billy, my alcoholic great-grandfather. Despite teetotaling descendants who escaped the addiction trap, emotional and relational toxins seeped downline.
Thus, as adults, my older sister and two cousins who lived in our household have expressed sorrow that the cherished patriarch we shared shielded his emotions behind a thick wall, seeming to make himself unknown and unknowable.
A death threat cracked the wall for me. My parents were terrified when I, as a toddler, was stricken with the polio epidemic claiming thousands of lives. Surviving but stuck with a painful leg, I snuggled into Dad’s arms for comforting hours in a big rocker. He and I rocked the nights away for months. In time, I could see the wall others described, but it seemed I’d somehow squeezed inside.
Despite years of clinical work, research, publishing and presenting on generational issues, I never really got this point until that day exploring family history with the rescue-mission group. Yes, my great-grandfather was the family alcoholic. And yes, my dad was emotionally distant, as is common in such families. Yes, Murray Bowen, I see these ancestor quirks. But now I also see the gift that gave this girl heart-nurturing access to her father.
So thanks, Moses, for the hot tip. Reflecting on the good, bad and ugly in the old family journey is indeed healing. Truth siphoned from half-truth. Triumph pried from trauma. Autobiography revised. Sweet blessing, indeed.
Beverly Hubble Tauke is a psychotherapist and public speaker based at Cornerstone Family Counseling in Fairfax, Va. She is the author of a 2007 book with the same title as this essay, published by SaltRiver/Tyndale House.
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