The power of elders
I will soon have been a parent for 47 years. That suggests that I have had the honor and privilege of being an elder for even longer.
As a young man, I was acutely aware of the blessings of wise and kind elders. I have often, in these blogs, expressed gratitude to them. It was a long time, however, before I accepted my elder role and the consequent power of my example – positive and negative. Even today, in many ways, I am waiting to become a person who is as wise and kind as the elders who have nurtured and guided me.
While at the gym this morning, I was listening for the third time to the rebroadcast of a 2015 conversation between Krista Tippett the host of On Being and Dr. Rachel Yehunda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. In the course of the conversation about epigenetics Dr. Yehunda quoted a passage from Jeremiah 31:28-30. The New International Version reads:
“Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, and to overthrow, destroy and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, “declares the Lord” “In those days’ people will no longer say, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
Dr. Yehunda refers to this quote to illustrate how we have “known” that the actions of parents and other elders have a profound effect on the youth. The studies in which she is involved demonstrate how parents experience and handle trauma has profound physical/genetic effects. Among other groups, she has studied the children of Holocaust survivors and the children of pregnant women who survived the 9/11 Twin Tower attacks.
How the parents experience and live out the stress can have a positive and/or negative affect on the children. Some parents may pass on resilience. Some may pass on constant anxiety. Some may pass on expectations that the children pay off the debt of their parent’s trauma experience by doing exceptionally well.
Obviously, the victims of trauma cannot undo their experience. They can heal (not forget or erase) and they can use the experience, as many do, to help create a more just and loving world.
If victims of trauma do not heal and are not able to be intentional about how they live with that experience and, thus, how their role of elder is affected by the trauma then they will live with acute stress. This chronic stress will then affect their children. The path which chronic stress creates has been mapped by those who have studied those who live in combat zone for a period of time. These studies reveal the extent of damage which is done to the organs of the body. It is the work of scientists such as Dr. Yehunda who are not able to also demonstrate what genetic changes can take place as a result of living with chronic stress.
Not all of us experience acute traumas. but all of us have to deal with life on life’s terms. How we do that profoundly affects our role as elders in positive and negative ways.
Today I recommit to being more intentional about the gift and responsibility of being an elder.
Written November 11, 2017
I will soon have been a parent for 47 years. That suggests that I have had the honor and privilege of being an elder for even longer.
As a young man, I was acutely aware of the blessings of wise and kind elders. I have often, in these blogs, expressed gratitude to them. It was a long time, however, before I accepted my elder role and the consequent power of my example – positive and negative. Even today, in many ways, I am waiting to become a person who is as wise and kind as the elders who have nurtured and guided me.
While at the gym this morning, I was listening for the third time to the rebroadcast of a 2015 conversation between Krista Tippett the host of On Being and Dr. Rachel Yehunda, a professor of psychiatry and neuroscience and director of the Traumatic Stress Studies Division of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. In the course of the conversation about epigenetics Dr. Yehunda quoted a passage from Jeremiah 31:28-30. The New International Version reads:
“Just as I watched over them to uproot and tear down, and to overthrow, destroy and bring disaster, so I will watch over them to build and to plant, “declares the Lord” “In those days’ people will no longer say, ‘The parents have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’
Dr. Yehunda refers to this quote to illustrate how we have “known” that the actions of parents and other elders have a profound effect on the youth. The studies in which she is involved demonstrate how parents experience and handle trauma has profound physical/genetic effects. Among other groups, she has studied the children of Holocaust survivors and the children of pregnant women who survived the 9/11 Twin Tower attacks.
How the parents experience and live out the stress can have a positive and/or negative affect on the children. Some parents may pass on resilience. Some may pass on constant anxiety. Some may pass on expectations that the children pay off the debt of their parent’s trauma experience by doing exceptionally well.
Obviously, the victims of trauma cannot undo their experience. They can heal (not forget or erase) and they can use the experience, as many do, to help create a more just and loving world.
If victims of trauma do not heal and are not able to be intentional about how they live with that experience and, thus, how their role of elder is affected by the trauma then they will live with acute stress. This chronic stress will then affect their children. The path which chronic stress creates has been mapped by those who have studied those who live in combat zone for a period of time. These studies reveal the extent of damage which is done to the organs of the body. It is the work of scientists such as Dr. Yehunda who are not able to also demonstrate what genetic changes can take place as a result of living with chronic stress.
Not all of us experience acute traumas. but all of us have to deal with life on life’s terms. How we do that profoundly affects our role as elders in positive and negative ways.
Today I recommit to being more intentional about the gift and responsibility of being an elder.
Written November 11, 2017
RSS Feed