Generational trauma

Improved my relationship with my parents even if they haven’t watched it

Saw so much of me and my family

“Wasn’t as impressed by everything everywhere all at once as people said I should be. I actually prefer Triangle of Sadness.” – literally wtf in my brain, how are they even comparable.

I cry every time I watch it without fail.

Teaches you about making mistakes but taking accountability and trying to grow stronger from it.

Everyone has a story and their own hurt.

Parents and kids alike are all just human.

I know I was definitely spoiled and blamed my parents for a lot of things.

It’s not about taking away the impact hurtful actions and words have, it’s about finding a way to apologise and forgive and a different way.

It’s a vicious cycle that we perpetuate, so it’s up to us to break from it.

Dad – hurt by his dad and mom. Hurt people hurt people.

Kids learn everything from their parents and surroundings.

It took me a very long time to accept my Asianness. I used to feel so much hatred and self-loathing because of it. Half of it was because there was so much hurt in Korean culture. Still on the journey to full acceptance but now I’m not afraid to face the truth of being Asian and all the messy, difficult things that come with it.

What does the daughter represent? What are her stand-out characteristics to me?

Mom?

Dad?

Grandfather?

It would’ve been so easy to continue the cycle. That’s comfortable, but that is often not the route to happiness and self-love. We were seeing the daughter go dangerously down the path to repeat the cycle.

My story might come from a history of war and colonialism, but I guess in a lot of ways, all agents of pain are variations of war and oppression.

I’m hoping I’m not the only one out there who’s done this – watched this existential, absurd, silly film on a loop. Definitely not the only person out there that started bawling their eyes out in a packed cinema the second Waymond utters, “I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.” So, if I am to accomplish one thing with this article, it is to make you put your phone down, finally find that TV remote you keep losing in the couch and turn that TV on (Everything Everywhere All At Once is free to watch on Channel 4 by the way, you’re welcome).

Not sure when you first discovered this term “generational trauma”, but it was pretty late in life for me. The concept of generational trauma was introduced to me sometime in high school when we were studying the Korean War, but I had felt it my whole life. We didn’t spend long on the Korean War, maybe two classes max, but the impact of the war continued to take over my teenage mind. To give you some context, I’m Korean, and my defining personality trait while growing up was that I HATED it. There was so much pain, sorrow and hatred ingrained in what I used to know as Korean culture. Memories of dusty canned army rations, screams of sisters as they’re being dragged away to opposite sides of the deep green forest, light humming of electricity cutting through the silence of the dining room as we’re eating dinner because we don’t know how to express things to each other, and never-ending haunting echoes of “you’re Korean so you must do this, look like this and act like this”. Especially when I was holding that image up against the sunshine, rainbows, red, white and blue image of the US, the poster child of Western civilisation, I couldn’t help but envy the carefreeness and boisterousness of the US. Why did we have to walk around with a bleeding heart, dripping the blood of our people onto our brand new Nike’s? My Westernised arrogance and inability to understand the pain contributed to the decaying relationship between myself and my born-and-bred Korean parents. There is an added layer of complexity to the familial relationship that brought me to tears as I was watching “Everything Everywhere All at Once”. The relationship was decaying like a time-lapse because I didn’t have the excuse of being Asian American. I was just. Asian. Born in Seoul, South Korea, but grew up in Shenzhen, China, surrounded by other Koreans who felt and acted Korean.

Life as a Korean wasn’t and still isn’t easy. Since 1910, Korea (back then, we were known as one) has been plagued with colonial rule. Imperial Japan (1910-1945) tried to erase Korean culture, art and the language. My grandmother has recited hazy and broken Japanese many times to us in the summers, recalling the days she would whisper her Korean birth name under her breath so she wouldn’t forget. This woman grew up during a time of great fear and longing to be free. Despite my grandmother knowing oppression first-hand, I grew up witnessing the oppression of my father by his mother and his consequent desperate fight for freedom. Does this image seem familiar to you, Evelyn? Gong gong? We are a product of our environment, and yes, we have free will, but I would argue that it is naive to underestimate the power of your parents and your surroundings.

To make matters worse for Korea, the US and Russia finally noticed us and decided to use us in their deathly silent Uno game (I refuse to compare it to a chess game). The Korean War catapulted us into further poverty, pain, anger and shame. So our grandparents grew up in fear during the rule of Imperial Japan and our parents grew up in the fear and poverty of the Korean War. You can imagine you had to learn how to be tough – hard as a rock and intensely proud. That was the only way we could keep Korea alive. To claw our way out of the sinkhole that is colonialism and war, authoritarian leadership and emphasis of Confucian tradition was used. Here’s a quick summary of Confucian tradition and values – “respect for parents, loyalty to government, and keeping to one’s place in society.” There is another side to Confucianism that describes the ability for us to live together with love, kindness and compassionately. You can imagine which side of Confucianism was more effective in the short term at bringing a nation together to WORK.

But I’m not here to give you a history lesson on Korea. I’m here to tell you exactly how and why a whacky, absurd movie healed the generationally deep cut of trauma. The background is needed to understand how deep that cut was for someone like me.

I saw myself in Joy. From the broken understanding of the mother tongue, tattoos my parents hate (or don’t know about whoops), non-traditional sexuality, and depression. This also makes me Jobu Tupaki – nihilistic and vengeful. There was no mission more important than the one where I broke my parent’s hearts as many times as they broke mine. In Evelyn, I see a lot of my father. Strained relationship with daughter and traditional ideas that create distance between us. Alpha Evelyn could’ve been my father’s twin. He saw potential in me and pushed me hard down a path I did not see joy and fulfilment in, except my mind didn’t break into a million pieces like Alpha Joy. Like Alpha Evelyn and Evelyn, offering validation was not a natural strength of my father’s.

I can imagine, from such an intense training programme, that there was no space for consoling and encouragement after making a mistake. Definitely no space to talk about the reasons why eyes are always looking at the ground and every minute not training was spent locked away alone. Oppression was masked as “pushing us to achieve our full potential”. Gong gong in my life was my grandmother, my father’s mother. Waymond? My mother now reminds me a lot of Waymond, but as a child, definitely not. Sadly, my story growing up didn’t have a wholesome, optimistic source of relief like Waymond. In a lot of ways, I saw myself in Waymond, too. At the worst of times, meek, amiable, “too nice”. At the best of times, optimistic, resilient, loving and kind.

Waymond speaks about how confused he is – “All day… I don’t know what the heck is going on. But somehow… this feels like it’s all my fault. I don’t know. The only thing I do know… is that we have to be kind. Please. Be kind… especially when we don’t know what’s going on.” When I heard what he said for the first time, I felt like he had picked that thought straight from my brain. It brought back memories of me hiding in my room with my door ajar and sometimes actually being in the room as my parents were throwing words as sharp as knives at each other. I was Waymond, confused and lost while trying to dodge the sharp knives my parents were throwing at each other.

As the movie progressed, I kept seeing parallels between my family and Joy’s. An East Asian family trying to make a better life for themselves in a new, strange place. But the hardship of reality instilled fear in the parents, there was so much they couldn’t control. What they could control, though, was their children, so they worked hard to make sure that their children did not have to face the same hardships as them. Only to put them in the same cage they inhabited as a child. Falling comfortably into the vicious cycle that is called generational trauma. I resented my parents, my parents’ parents and all my ancestors for the pain I had felt.

As the years have gone by and there has been physical and, therefore, emotional distance between us, I forgave bit by bit. Moving out for university meant that we no longer had to see each other every day. I was able to escape the weight of my parent’s gaze. They were always sending me a combination of disappointment, desperation and hope. Finally, I was free to feel emotions other than guilt and fear. Finally, I was able to be who I truly was. Even came to the realisation that a lot of my rebellious behaviour was mostly a result of my desire to escape, not who I was. For my parents, they no longer had to stare straight down the barrel of my piercings and dyed hair. They weren’t confronted by their perceived failure every day, and I think that made them happier. More empathetic? More forgiving? Weird, who knew all you needed to do was live halfway across the world to finally enjoy your family’s company? Escaping the shackles of expectation meant I didn’t have a keeper to resent anymore. Being able to wear a short-sleeved t-shirt that revealed my tattoos allowed me to free up my mind and work on things that mattered, like processing our collective trauma.

In the moments of freedom I had, I started to recognise that my parents didn’t have the same opportunities as me. At 18, I was able to physically escape my mental and emotional prison. Back in the 1980s & 90s Seoul, it wasn’t an option for my parents to create physical distance between their keepers. This reality became clearer each time I visited home. I could finally see the emotional chain that my parents continued to carry around and fiddle with. My father’s rusty chain connected him and his mother forever. He’s had moments to break free, but instead, he and his mother somehow worked together to add to the chain, making it longer so they could be connected forever. The newfound clarity I had allowed me to see my father’s expression when he would add another link to the chain. A familiar expression to me indeed. One of exhaustion and defeat.

My mother’s spiky shackle bonded her to my father; a classic hurt people hurt people situation. When my mother had the capacity to act outside of fear, she would try to add some flowers to the chain. Very Waymond of her. Unfortunately, in very not like Waymond fashion, my father would yank the shackle and tear away the flowers. Finally, my father yanked the chain so hard that my mother was able to use force against him and broke free. Perhaps this was the true first step in breaking the cycle. Seeing the inner turmoil my parents experienced was like looking simultaneously into a mirror and a crystal ball. Despite slowly being able to see the existence of a cycle, being a Leo and regrettably self-righteous makes it difficult for me to move on from being the ultimate victim. So, by 2022, I was still a very long way off from healing and breaking the cycle.

Spring 2022, I sat down in the plush, slightly warm cinema seat, not knowing a single thing about the film and eager to escape. The lights dim, the voices turn into whispers, and the film plays. First, I see the parallels I explained earlier. Then, almost in exactly the same fractured and vibrant way the film shows the multiverse, I see my family’s story. Just like the confusing, scattered way of the multiverse and Evelyn’s mind, I could see my parents’ individual stories. Suddenly, it was as clear as a flawless diamond. I finally saw my parents and my life the way I wished my parents saw it. I understood at that moment that even if in all other universes I repeat the cycle of pain, I am the author of my own story in this universe right now. Queue stinging of the nose, shuddering of the shoulders and face in hands with tears dripping through the cracks between my fingers. It was like my body was purging every ounce of anguish through my tears. Coming to this understanding is a strange sensation. I cry like I’ve never cried before, for myself, for my parents and for my grandparents. Grieving the sunshine and rainbows story we never had.

Even though the tears started flowing because of sorrow, I ended up crying the most when I was grieving the dissolution of my past, angry self. I had to let go of the comfortable, angry, spiteful person that kept me afloat all those years. Once I finished grieving, I continued crying because I was so relieved and happy. My tears at the very end were for my love for my family. No matter how many boxes of tissue I go through, how many times I feel this unbearable pain in my chest, I choose to hit replay. The shattered image of my family stares straight at me every moment of the film. It was only when it was being held clearly in front of me that I was finally able to understand the shapes of the fractured pieces and how they could be brought back together.

I haven’t spoken to my parents about the film. I don’t know if they’ve ever seen or heard of it. To this day, neither of them have apologised or acknowledged the hurt, but I don’t need them to. So much resentment of the past was because I was only focusing on what my parents were doing to me. I never took enough time to consider the impact of my actions, what I could control. After this film ripped fistfuls of emotional stuffing out of the stuffed animal that is me, I now speak to my parents most days. I make sure that at least once a week, I ask my parents genuinely how they are doing and provide comfort. I choose to start glueing and painting the pieces back together. I choose to forgive and love them. I choose to laugh and cry with them. I choose to dedicate my life to healing. Whether you are Gong Gong, Evelyn, Joy or Waymond, I hope I helped a little bit in your journey to healing.