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New Webinars in July!

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I am excited to announce three new webinars in July and early August. To learn more just click the links below to watch a short video and read about the webinar. Replays will be available for those who cannot attend live.

Unlock the Past Webinar Tuesday 27 July 2021 at 12:00 p.m. CST

In this webinar, Unlock the Past, we will explore different ways we hold negative and lower vibrational energies in our system, which create more chaos and suffering for ourselves.

Feel the Power Webinar Wednesday 28 July 2021 at 12:00 p.m. CST

Are you ready to start creating a higher vibratory and more joyful energy for the last of 2021? Join me for this 1-hour program in which we will hold sacred space and learn ways to use energetic tools to create more ease and balance in our lives. I will take you on a journey through meditative states into several energetic tools.

Introduction to Ancestral Lineage Healing Wednesday, 4 August 2021 at 12:00 p.m. CST

While holding space and providing a safe, sacred environment, I will explore topics related to Ancestral Lineage Healing which include: grief, loss, trauma, family secrets, family patterns, family parallels, caregiving, spirituality and religion, PTSD, racism, genealogical topics, inherited trauma, and the effects of the war on families in addition to the veteran.

Ancestral Cafe Membership

Also, be sure to check out the new Ancestral Cafe Membership program. Details and our first two live programs are described in the program details page.

© 2021 WWII Research & Writing Center

Exploring Those ‘Tiny’ Military Service Details

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For all the years I have been doing genealogy and military research, I have heard from clients, friends, and family, ‘I wish I would have asked my dad or mom (or grandma or grandpa)……. about their military service.’ Even I have uttered those words. Time runs out, the individual dies, and the questions can not be asked. Sometimes we don’t even know we had a question until we dive deeper into the genealogy or military research or our personal and ancestral healing.

Perhaps the most common question I’ve heard clients and friends say is, ‘I would like to understand what he experienced so I know why he was the way he was….[insert angry, rageful, abandoned me, abused me, was depressed, an alcoholic, a drug abuser, anxious, etc.]’

There is a way we can better understand the experiences of our family member while in service or combat. We can explore those ‘tiny’ details we may have missed when we started researching.

SS Joshua Hendy – 1 June 1944

Last week I started looking again at the deck logs for the ships my grandfather was on and some new details stood out. This is an example of an entry on the deck log for the SS Joshua Hendy for 1 June 1944.

Pay attention to the event at 1039. While this event of striking a reef and the ship rolling and righting itself may not have been a combat event and may have been “not such a big deal” compared to what the men witnessed and experienced on other days, this event may have impacted the men on this ship.

Can you for a moment put yourself in the shoes of someone on that ship? Do you lose your balance unexpectedly? Hear noises that are out of context for a ship moving through clear waters? Wonder if you were hit and will you sink? Anxiety runs through you and you wonder if you must run to your battle station or prepare to abandon ship.

How might those thoughts and emotions affected the sailor in that moment, later that day or even weeks or months later if not addressed and processed? When we do not process events that affect us, it can become frozen in our body and a trigger later may unleash the old trauma which may have been forgotten. However, when in the course of war, event after event happens and is unprocessed, repressed and not processed when the veteran returns home, the accumulation can create a lot of issues for the veteran and his or her family for years to come.

Exploring the records with fresh eyes and paying attention to the smaller details can give us a better idea what shaped the person we are researching.

My Invitation To You

Write down the questions you have about your family member(s) that were never answered, or not answered when maybe they could have been.

Write down the issues your veteran or family member had that might have been related to war trauma. You can do the same for inherited trauma and family abuse.

Take your genealogy or military research papers out and look at them with fresh eyes. What do you notice?

Make notes about the ‘tiny’ details you find that might help explain why someone was the way they were or how that detail might answer a question.

What have you learned about your ancestor?

What have you learned about yourself?

Optional: Write a letter to the person you are researching and ask your questions or explain how you feel about how they behaved or treated you. Set the intention that your words and feelings reach their higher self. You can light a candle or set a circle of protection around yourself before you begin writing if you choose. When you are finished, burn the letter and send the energy of it to the universe for transformation.

This can be a very healing exercise. I have been writing letters to living people the last several months that I would like to share my feelings with, but know it will not be received by the person or I need to get it out of my system so I can heal. I have noticed that I always feel better and my healing goes a little deeper and the living person shifts after I do this exercise and they usually don’t know it. Everything works out for all our highest good when we take the time to process and release.

Be sure to join the mailing list to stay in touch and receive news and discounts on classes.

© 2021 WWII Research & Writing Center

WWII Civilians, Veterans & Descendant Mental Health

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After World War II ended, civilians who lived through the war and veterans who fought, returned home and were told to rebuild and restart their lives. Tools were not made available to help the general public (anywhere in the world) or veterans, with all the psychological impact of what they had experienced. This resulted in civilians and veterans pushing down or ignoring what they had experienced.

When these individuals began having children, and those children had children, the energy and trauma of what they endured was passed down through the generations. This has resulted in countless people on the planet with inherited trauma that they may not realize they carry and are numb to until triggered. Or, they are triggered but do not understand what is happening. The trauma and energy is so decontextualized or never talked about by their parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, that triggered individuals do not understand why they feel the overwhelming emotions they do. This may have resulted in anxiety, depression, addictions, and other physical and mental illnesses.

How many of you reading this article can relate to the overwhelming feelings? I can. These are carried feelings. For much of my life I thought I was depressed. Anxious. Too much. Too different. Too afraid of (insert so many things). However, most of what I was experiencing was not even mine. It belonged to my parents, my grandparents, aunts and uncles, great grandparents, and keep going back in the lineage.

For the spiritual readers, you may say, but couldn’t some of that also be past life experiences that are in need of healing? Yes. I have experienced that too, especially in Europe. Being empathic also means I have picked up the energy of people I love, friends and family, people I pass by, and even the dead.

So what do we do with this? How do we better understand ourselves and the trauma our ancestors pushed down or ignored?

Overwhelming Emotions and Energy

In studying with several teachers who help the collective heal WWII trauma and relationship trauma, one therapist’s work was recommended. Pia Mellody. In her book, Facing Codependency. What it is, Where it comes from, How it sabotages our lives, Pia explains these overwhelming emotions and the carried energy.

I highly recommend this book as most people walking around today have some level of codependency and may not even know it or will not admit it and release the hold it has on them. It can cripple you and your relationships and we learn it from our parents, grandparents, and so forth. It is how society has been programmed to be and carry dysfunctional habits and beliefs. Humanity is more easily controlled when we behave in dysfunctional ways and never question anything. We can see this after any war where things are not to be questioned and truths are hidden, kept secret, lied about, and changed in the history books.

Pia defines these overwhelming feelings in her chapter on “The Emotional Damage of Abuse”, as, ‘carried feelings are overwhelming while your own, even though they may be intense, are not. When we experience carried anger, we rage; when we experience carried fear, we have panic attacks and attacks of paranoia; when we experience carried pain, we move into hopelessness, profound feelings of depression, and perhaps even thoughts of suicide. Carried shame causes us to feel “worth less.”‘

Can you relate? Do you see these carried feelings in your family? Did you ever hear stories that now make more sense understanding this energy? I can see this in my ancestry.

What Do We Do With This Information?

When I looked at the patterns and traumas in my family tree, specifically related to my grandfather’s World War II service, and the energy my grandmother carried, I can trace some of this back to her grandfather, Josef Schubert.

Josef hung himself and my grandma Libbie found him when she was 24 years old. She was married with two children at home. While I knew the basics after reading Josef’s death certificate and talking to my uncle, no one ever thought to talk about how that affected Grandma.

What energies did she carry from that experience that she passed down to her sons and then those sons to their children? What energies did she hold on to that may have made it harder for her when her husband returned from war a changed man? Did she ever deal with any of those?

The deeper I dive into the genogram and patterns and beliefs of my ancestors and explore my own energies, feelings, and beliefs, along with the negative effects that have shown up throughout my life, I wonder if anyone had been brave enough to talk about this event, and what happened after the war, how would we all be different? Less dysfunctional? Less codependent? Less (insert whatever might be coming up)?

My Invitation To You

Most people will say, if a family member wanted a secret to be left in the dark – leave it there. If we feel shame, grief, guilt, anger, sadness, around things in our personal and family history, we should ignore it. Don’t bring it up with living family who may be able to shed light on it. The world has become so politically correct that it is not ok any longer to talk about the shadow sides of our families.

My point of view is we need to start bringing these shadows into the light. We need to be asking questions of the living. We can go about it in a way that is not rage filled but with curiosity. We can better understand the energies passed down to us that create dysfunction and physically illness in our lives.

We can listen and witness someone’s experience or pain. We can heal.

Through these discussions, we can Listen. Witness. Heal. Are you ready?

Are you ready to start your healing journey?

Are you ready to begin untangling and looking at your family’s war trauma? Or any other family trauma and patterns that have affected your life? If you would like assistance in this, contact me at info@wwiirwc.com to ask how I can help you. I use facilitation packages of 1, 3 or 5 hours to work with clients as we explore their genealogy and military histories, to find the patterns, and do energy healing together.

Are you ready to heal your past to live a fuller, more vibrant life with more possibilities?

Be sure to join the mailing list to stay in touch and receive news and discounts on classes.

© 2021 WWII Research & Writing Center

Mental Health of WWII Veterans & Families

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When our veterans returned from World War II, many had invisible wounds. Mental health issues, which ranged from mild to severe. The propaganda and programming of society (in the U.S. and abroad) was to not talk about these possible or diagnosed issues. To let the veteran deal with it on his own and the family to allow whatever happened. There was a lot of familial shame, grief, and anger around veterans mental health. These emotions which led to secrets at the time and which were passed through the generations.

It is interesting to realize that after the war, many families were going through similar things, but the public was basically told to buck up and move on. We can see in books written by Holocaust survivors or children or grandchildren of WWII veterans, that most carry a portion of a story that goes something like this: I didn’t know until I was older that my friends on my block all had fathers who drank or were mean or angry. I thought it was normal to have a father who wasn’t around, who wasn’t emotional, who drank a lot, who beat us…… I didn’t know until I saw a therapist to deal with my issues related to my childhood that many children of veterans had similar PTSD issues.

I am aware that most of the readers of this article can related to all of this information. Not everything may apply to your family and situation, but something might. It might trigger a memory or a story once heard, that raises questions. The trigger might also push something old and dark within you to the surface to be looked at and healed. Please realize that every veteran who returned, came back different. They all had issues to reconcile because you can’t go from being a God fearing, Thou Shalt Not Kill man to a soldier who has killed without changing. Even in families where the children and grandchildren say the veteran was calm, loving, productive, peaceful, etc., beneath that carefully constructed facade likely lied unresolved trauma. It was a rare veteran who had all the tools to come back, readjust, and transmit zero trauma to his family or future generations. You might read my article, Trauma of Being the ‘Bad Guy’ in War if you have not. This addresses some of these issues.

Experiments and Treatments

Downey VA Hospital

During and after World War II, veterans with diagnosed or suspected mental health issues were in large part, used as experiments on techniques, technology, and drugs. This may be hard for some people to believe, but if you had a family member who suffered at all from PTSD, Shell Shock, Combat Fatigue, or whatever term they were labeled with, I invite you to dig into the research. Not only do the books and website recommended below talk about this but if you dive into official medical unit files, you will learn about all kinds of experiments the military ran on veterans while overseas and at home. You should read some of the records I have read. It is shocking.

I often wonder how many diagnoses were given out that were incorrect because the psychiatrists and psychologists of the time did not have enough information. Or perhaps they were under pressure to IGNORE the fact that military service, the trauma endured, the killer men had to be, the death and dying of buddies, created mental health issues. When we ignore what is really happening, it opens up a space to abuse.

On the other side of this coin, we have the spiritual self, the soul, that was also damaged because of war trauma, both was the veteran experienced and what he had to inflict to do his job. It has been documented, especially by Dr. Edward Tick, War & the Soul or Warrior’s Return, were we see the soul fragment and detach from the soldier while he is under extreme stress. Native Americans and African Tribal Culture is explained in the book about how they welcome returning veterans and help them, as a village, bring the soul back to the body. To help the warrior forgive himself and others. The militaries around the world have never taken this approach. It is all about transforming a civilian into a soldier, then a soldier returns and is lucky to get any transition support back to civilian or to deal emotionally, spiritually, physically, and mentally with what he did.

All of these things affected the family that lived with or supported the returning veteran after World War II, and this unresolved, undigested trauma was transmitted to the extended family, the children, grandchildren, and so on. Energy carries even when you keep secrets or tell lies about what happened. Children especially pick up on this energy and will often “fill in the blanks” about what happened, often incorrectly, but still creating trauma in their bodies and energy fields that could have been avoided if people would have been open.

My Experiences

I have had both the experience of hearing secrets and lies about my own family’s war experience and that of European in-laws. Not only did I hear from the living, but also from the dead. My grandfather, great grand uncle, and cousins who died in war have all given clues and told me things that have helped me better understand what my parents went through, why they held certain beliefs and why I held those beliefs. Additionally, why we all carried unresolved trauma.

On the European side, the in-laws are both deceased but have shown up often. The mother in-law to be more specific as she carried so much trauma that she passed to her children which is still unhealed. Often when she shows up it is incredibly intense and sometimes brings me to my knees in grief and tears, pain and anger. There are times I have had to say NO to her and let her work it out or go find someone else to help her. It is not my job to help everyone heal when they show up at the expense of my own health and happiness.

What I have noticed in talking with friends in Europe and living there over the last many years, is Europeans carry a lot of unseen, unspoken, but harmful layers of war trauma. A lot of mental health issues after the war I suspect were never addressed. A lot of people “settling” and marrying someone they may not have if the war had not forced them together in a traumatic circumstance. This isn’t to say there wasn’t love over time, but for many, even in books and accounts we hear today from children and grandchildren of war, they had no one else so they chose who they chose. This also affects people’s mental health in carried energy ways.

How Do We Start To Heal?

Joe and Libbie

We begin by being honest with ourselves about what our family’s war experience was. This doesn’t just go for World War II but every war before and after. All of those experiences created trauma within our families that was passed through the generations.

We attempt to have open and honest conversations with family members about our veteran’s history and experience.

We do the research required to learn more about the veteran’s experience, no matter where it leads us.

We explore the family beliefs, positive and negative patterns that we carry or observe. We look at ways to heal those patterns and negative beliefs so they stop with us. When we heal ourselves, we heal the collective.

We reach out to mental health professionals or intuitive or energy healers to dive deeper into our subconscious. To connect with those who have gone before us to see what messages come through. To bring the dark to light and heal.

This is not easy work and not fun. I have been diving deeply for years, but I can say with certainty, the negative beliefs and patterns are stopping with me. I have noticed that my healing has affected those in my family and those connected to me, even if they do not notice this or are consciously aware. I was chosen for this work. It has changed me in so many amazing ways. I will not stop digging for the “truth” on my healing journey.

Resources to Explore

Use the online newspapers to search for keywords like, veteran mental health, veteran psychiatry, returning veterans mental health, and specific diagnoses.

Blog: Oldfoolrn has many articles on Downey VA Hospital north of Chicago. This nurse gives a lot of great information (and very sad) about how veterans were treated and experimented on after the war.

Psychology for the Fighting Man. What You Should Know About Yourself and Others. An Infantry Journal book, 1944.

A Psychiatric Primer for the Veteran’s Family and Friends by Alexander G. Dumas and Grace Graham Keen. 1945.

Both books can also be found on Internet Archive if you like reading PDFs.

Are you ready to start your healing journey?

Are you ready to begin untangling and looking at your family’s war trauma? Or any other family trauma and patterns that have affected your life? If you would like assistance in this, contact me at info@wwiirwc.com to ask how I can help you. I use facilitation packages of 1, 3 or 5 hours to work with clients as we explore their genealogy and military histories, to find the patterns, and do energy healing together.

Are you ready to heal your past to live a fuller, more vibrant life with more possibilities?

Be sure to join the mailing list to stay in touch and receive news and discounts on classes.

© 2021 WWII Research & Writing Center

Family Secrets & Patterns After World War II

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We are living through a period of years where many things are coming to the light that were previously hidden in the darkness. It will be up to each of us to choose whether or not to look at these things and process and heal them within ourselves or to push them down, deny, ignore, and create more suffering for ourselves. One of these themes coming to light are family secrets, lies, and patterns after World War II.

Within each family, it has been said, one person was born to step up and heal the ancestral lineage. Sometimes this person is not born into a family but marries or is adopted into the family. I have had experience being the one born into my lineage to step up, speak out, and heal, and also to marry into a seriously traumatized family where no one stepped up yet the in-law ancestors made their presence known to me. Sometimes this brought me to my knees in grief and pain and other times I told them to go away. Please know that when you marry into a family, you still have the choice of whether or not to take on the in-laws and your spouse’s family trauma and secrets.

The Returning Veteran

As I explored my own war-related family patterns and secrets, especially over the last year, my Navy grandpa (died 1964) said I needed to start looking into what the programming and manipulation was of the veteran and the public upon the return of veterans after the war. Grandpa keeps telling me the story I think I know, which changes with the additional information I receive periodically, is not the whole story. Not his whole story or the whole story of our family. There are still many layers for us to heal. This led me to ask several questions.

  • What were families and veterans told?
  • What were they not told?
  • Where did this information appear?
  • Who had access?
  • How did families with parents who could not read or write (well or at all), obtain vital information?
  • How did the families process this information to help the veteran readjust to civilian life after the war?
  • Did my family know about this information? How did my grandma deal with her veteran husband’s return and war wounds? How did my dad and uncles deal with it?
  • How did their ability and inability to process what happened during and after the war affect me and my kids? How did the denial, shame, anger, and grief of what happened affect how I was raised? My beliefs? How I raised my kids?

What Was Available?

As I began my initial research, I discovered you can use online newspaper sites, choose your city or closest city, and dive into keywords to see what families and returning veterans were told.

Keywords like: returning veteran, returning soldier, veteran readjustment, GI bill, military readjustment, soldier to civilian, and other similar terms that relate to a veteran returning.

One thing to keep in mind as you read these articles, is they were written in the 1940s. Attitudes about men’s and women’s roles were very different. The programming at the time was for veterans to Come home, rebuild, get married, go to school, get a job, start a family, forget and shut up about your war experience.

For families the programming was a lot of wives be a good support to your husband, take care of his needs, be the perfect wife/mother, don’t ask questions, have more children, stay at home (especially if you were out in the workforce supporting the war effort).

These are a few examples of the cultural programming, not only in the U.S. but worldwide. However, this article focuses on the U.S.

To better understand the family patterns, lies, and secrets within each of our families after the war, we need to know what the programming and manipulation of people was, or propaganda if you like that term better. Once we better understand what the public was told, we can begin to dissect our family patterns, seeing them for what they are, not what we imagined them to be.

Resources to Start Your Exploration

Newspapers are a great resource because we can see exactly what was published for the public at the time veterans were returning and women had to leave the workforce, in many cases.

You can also read books that were written during and after the war for returning veterans and their families. I do question whether or not my grandmother would have known about the books I’ll list here and if she even had time to read them while raising a family, working, and taking care of her parents as needed. It feels she was more likely to read the newspaper or talk to the other wives at the butcher or baker.

Psychology for the Returning Serviceman. An Infantry Journal publication prepared by a Committee of the National Research Council. You can still get some of these as first editions. They are small books that cover a lot of information.

Soldier to Civilian. Problems of Readjustment by George K. Pratt, M.D. 1944.

Veteran Comes Back by Willard Waller. 1944.

All three of these books are also on Internet Archive if you like PDF files. I prefer to hold the books and was able to get first edition copies. They are extremely informative and have given me a new perspective on my grandparent’s lives after the war.

You can also read my article with journal prompts on Questions to Explore Your Family Patterns.

What books or articles have you read that helped you better understand how a veteran readjusted to civilian life? Please share in the comments.

Are you ready to start your healing journey?

Are you ready to begin untangling and looking at your family’s war trauma? Or any other family trauma and patterns that have affected your life? If you would like assistance in this, contact me at info@wwiirwc.com to ask how I can help you. I use facilitation packages of 1, 3 or 5 hours to work with clients as we explore their genealogy and military histories, to find the patterns, and do energy healing together.

Are you ready to heal your past to live a fuller, more vibrant life with more possibilities?

© 2021 WWII Research & Writing Center

Kristin Hannah’s Winter Garden

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Historical Fiction can provide a new way to connect to your own family history by exploring the stories of others. Kristin Hannah has some amazing books that have given me many things to question about my own family history. Historical Fiction also introduces me to new historical periods, people, and things that I can explore on my own. Are you ready to take your family history research, questioning, and writing to a new level by choosing a different perspective?

What You Need

A copy of Kristin Hannah’s Winter Garden.

A journal and pen or your laptop or iPad. Whatever you enjoy using to write and gather your thoughts.

Downloadable guides provided in this section.

What’s Next?

Download the Questions While You Read guide and use it while you read the novel.

Grab a journal to record your thoughts as you read and explore the questions posed in this guide designed to help you examine themes and layers of the story. Consider how the questions connect in your own life. As you read this book, record your thoughts on the characters’ stories and your own life story.

Try not to judge any of it. This might be difficult, but try to stand back and observe.

After you finish the novel, download the Post-Reading Questions & Writing Prompts guide. Then find a quiet space in which you can journal undisturbed. Be aware that these writing prompts may require you to dig deeper than you wish to go in one sitting. Take your time. Set an intention to allow your truth to flow through you onto the page to help you see clearly, the various aspects of your life and that of your family’s. Ask yourself what you might learn by working with these questions and how you might Find the Answers and closure to your own secrets, stories, and past.

Use your journal to record your thoughts to post-reading questions and writing prompts posed in this guide. Some of the questions posed here are also included in the Questions While You Read guide. I duplicate a few because your perception and answers have likely changed now that you read the book and have had time to process it.

The end of the novel contains a Reading Guide with questions Kristin created. Use those in your journal in addition to the questions posed here.

Disclaimer: The book link is an affiliate link and Amazon pays me a small sales royalty if you use it.

© 2021 WWII Research & Writing Center

Protecting the Emotional Health of an 82nd Airborne MP’s Parents

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During World War II there was a hierarchy of legal next-of-kin. If the soldier was unmarried it was father, mother, oldest sibling. If the soldier was married, then widow unless she remarried before choices had to be made, then it reverted to the father. However, there are cases where the military allowed someone in the family other than mom or dad to be the legal next of kin to make decisions on where the remains should be buried and who received personal effects and any monies due the soldier. This article provides one example in which a daughter is protecting the emotional health of her parents.

Now, before we proceed, it is important to know Arthur Abram’s story is part of a much larger 82nd Airborne and Blacks-Whites Army segregation violence story in Leicester, England, during 1944. You can search for Abrams and Leicester online and should run across a book on Google Books called, But for These Things – Leicester and its People in WWII, By Vincent Holyoak. There is also a website (with no contact/author information) that pops up in search results before this which appears to have plagarized the book and a newspaper article, to add the information to the website. I will not link the website.

Another name that appears in these accounts is Curtis E. Phares who also died that night. You will see bits of his story, also appeared to have been plagarized from the book, on the website that appears. The book, written a few years ago seems to leave readers with the idea the family never really knew what happened to Curtis, however, his very burned OMPF does exist and I have a copy. I will not share that here, but answers to what happened to Phares, and testimony from many others, can mostly be found within what remains of his burned file.

Protecting the Parents

Cpl Arthur Abrams, MP Platoon 82nd Airborne, born in 1912, died of a stab wound on 1 May 1944 in Leicester, England. Arthur had a wish he expressed to his siblings before he left for war, and which he expressed again before he died. That his mother not worry about him. This excerpt is from his sister Sara (p. 31/56 of the PDF).

However, Arthur’s mother was not the only one that the siblings felt they needed to protect. Their father was also in bad health and needed emotional protection. Neither was mentally fit, according to the children with Sara as their mouthpiece, to make decisions or hear the news that Arthur had died. This led to many letters being exchanged between Sara and the military and the parents’ doctor and the military to verify that Sara should be made legal next-of-kin. This excerpt is from p. 25/56 of the PDF.

Sara’s final sentence of the 2nd paragraph shown here is a powerful statement that applies to EVERY family in WWII. My brother was killed but we too are war casualties even though our wound does not show or bleed.

The letters in this file are heart-wrenching as Sara tries to protect her parents from the knowledge that their son died. This was a heavy burden for her and her siblings to carry. I have no information how on how long after the war the parents lived or if they were ever told. The file is a good example of how many hoops someone had to jump through to prove the legal heir needed to change. It also shows us some of the health conditions the parents had, which is important information for a family historian.

This is not the first file I’ve seen showing this type of example, but it is one of the most powerful and well-written. The letters are also another example of a strong woman speaking up for those who can’t speak or need to be protected.

Read Arthur’s full IDPF and the letters from his sister Sara. He is buried in ABMC Cambridge Cemetery in the UK.

What interesting things have you found in your military research that helped your family heal?

Are you ready to start your healing journey?

Are you ready to begin untangling and looking at your family’s war trauma? Or any other family trauma and patterns that have affected your life? If you would like assistance in this, contact me at info@wwiirwc.com to ask how I can help you. I use facilitation packages of 1, 3 or 5 hours to work with clients as we explore their genealogy and military histories, to find the patterns, and do energy healing together.

Are you ready to heal your past to live a fuller, more vibrant life with more possibilities?

© 2021 WWII Research & Writing Center

Confusion & Anger Among Gold Star Families

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Hamm Cemetery, Luxembourg

They never talked about it.

They just shut down. You couldn’t mention his name. My grandmother wouldn’t allow anyone to talk about him. She was sad and angry as long as I knew her.

I overheard whispering after a family dinner about my father who died in the war.

It felt like there was a gap in our family and I did not understand what or WHO that was until I was an adult.

I never understood why my father was so angry and withdrawn after my brother died in the war.

These are just a few of the things I have heard from military or genealogy research clients or writing clients the last 11 years. The societal programming around military death and family lore is to accept and say, ‘They never talked about it.’ and just move on. Never go deeper into what was left unsaid. Never ask questions about the family’s pain. Never try to find out what really happened.

Every Gold Star Family from any war carries the pain. While I may provide examples from World War II, what I saw applies to any war and every family. So how do we investigate and attempt to put the pieces together for what really happened that caused our family members to shut down? We start with the military records. Specifically the Individual Deceased Personnel File (IDPF) which is the death file from WWII to present or the WWI Burial File. There are many other records to explore, but this is the primary start point.

After reading hundreds of IDPFs, one thing is very clear to me in 99% of cases. The families were given the bare bones standard military issue form letters when their service member died overseas. It doesn’t matter which branch they served in, the documents are the same or similar.

Most families questions about what happened to their service member, how they died, what happened to their remains, where are the personal effects, etc. were barely acknowledged. A standard form letter was sent instead. With the number of casualties, whether wounded or dead, there was not enough time or staff to properly answer every inquiry.

It is also important to remember that communication was very slow at that time. World War II was not the age of instant texts, emails, and Tweets. Information had to be sent up the line via messenger, telegram, radio, plane, ship, rail, and processed before going to the family.

Due to the lack of information and the time it took for a family member to be notified of a death, often between a few weeks and months, a lot of questions went unanswered as grief set in. Additionally, in some files I’ve read, a woman’s or mother’s intuition was basically disregarded when she wrote letters asking about her husband or son’s fate. You can learn more about this in an article I wrote about Navy Airman George Howe Jr. Then you can also view his IDPF and read more letters from his mother asking for the military’s help to locate her son, which she felt was still alive. He was never recovered.

In only a few IDPFs I have seen or other military records, did families actually get answers to what happened. Answers that either created more grief and pain or provided some healing and relief.

Two examples, first include a soldier buried in Normandy who I will write an article about soon. This soldier’s sister spoke her truth and demanded answers on behalf of her parents, for her brother’s death. Her energy is really quite amazing. Watch for this article.

Another example, which I am also writing articles on, is a Jewish 79th Division soldier who died in France. His IDPF is actually 361 pages long. His father had money, social standing & connections, and education. These factors contributed to him being able to receive answers. When you have friends in influential places…….

I have also linked two articles below that share a little of what a family went through as they processed their grief after the deaths of their sons. These articles and IDPFs ask questions you don’t often seen in other files. However, the details provide some information as to the family’s pain. Pain I wonder if was every fully processed.

Perhaps a great example is from Phil Rosenkrantz in his book, Letters from Uncle Dave, that dives deep into the research of Phil’s uncle who was KIA in the Netherlands in 1944 and unidentified for more about 70 years. Phil took a deep dive, per my suggestion, into his family’s war trauma and how doing the research helped him and several other family members heal and better understand what everyone experienced.

My Invitation to You

I invite you to sit with your research and family lore to dive deeply into the emotions your family has shared over the years. To look beyond the They never talked about it idea and start talking about it. Gather around the dinner table and open up the conversation. It may take you down a path you didn’t expect.

When the military archives open up again, obtain copies of the records for your military family members that will help you tell their stories and start to heal the ancestral lineage. When we remember our fallen, they are also healed. Most even have lessons and messages to pass on to family members willing to listen.

Related Articles & Resources on Family Choice & Grief

Should I Repatriate the Remains of My Son?

A Family’s Grief & the Cost of Repatriation

If you are interested in learning more about the IDPF, I have a book and online course and webinar on my WWII Education website. The IDPF course contains more than 25 downloadable documents to help you better understand these incredibly rich files.

Are you ready to begin untangling and looking at your family’s war trauma? Or any other family trauma that has affected your life? If you would like assistance in this, contact me at info@wwiirwc.com to ask how I can help you. I use facilitation packages of 1, 3 or 5 hours to work with clients as we explore their genealogy and military histories, to find the patterns, and do energy healing together.

Are you ready to heal your past to live a fuller, more vibrant life with more possibilities?

© 2021 WWII Research & Writing Center

Questions to Explore Your Family Patterns

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Yesterday I wrote an article called Trauma of Being the ‘Bad Guy’ in War. I invited readers to start looking at the stories, beliefs, and patterns in your ancestral lineage. Today I offer some questions for you to use to start your exploration. These come from my book Stories from the World War II Battlefield: Writing The Stories of War. You can find more than 500 writing prompts in this book, plus story outlines and more! You can find this and all my books on this site.

Journal Prompts for Children of War

This section of the writing prompt book contains 27 questions.

  • What lessons (positive and negative) were passed down through the family because of the war?
  • What lessons (positive and negative) were passed down through the family because of the war?
  • What lessons (positive and negative) were passed down through the family because of the war?
  • What lessons (positive and negative) were passed down through the family because of the war?
  • Was there any neglect or abuse because of the trauma of war? Emotional, mental, spiritual, physical? This question applies not only to children but spouses of those who served.
  • Most men of the right age HAD to go fight. There was no choice. How did this lack of choice affect how they lived the rest of their lives and raised their children, if they survived the war? Did they feel they still had choices after the war?
  • How did your mother and the family cope if the father was in any way disabled (mentally, physically, emotionally) from the war?  
  • How did the family cope if he spent most of his days living in a hospital rather than with the family? How did this impact the lives of his children?

Journal Prompts for Grandchildren of War

This part of the writing book contains 11 writing prompts.

  • What lessons were passed down through the family because of the war?
  • What stories did you hear about your grandfather or grandmother who served in the war?
  • Was there abuse or neglect in your family because of how your parents were raised after the war? How did you cope with it? Did you allow the abuse to continue or did you stop the cycle?
  • What do you wish you could ask your grandparents about their service or life during the war, if they were still alive?

My invitation to you!

Would you like more military research and writing education? I offer short online courses and webinars on my WWII Education website.

Are you ready to begin untangling and looking at your family’s war trauma? Or any other family trauma that has affected your life? If you would like assistance in this, contact me at info@wwiirwc.com to ask how I can help you. I use facilitation packages of 1, 3 or 5 hours to work with clients as we explore their genealogy and military histories, to find the patterns, and do energy healing together.

Are you ready to heal your past to live a fuller, more vibrant life with more possibilities?

© 2021 WWII Research & Writing Center

Trauma of Being ‘The Bad Guy’ in War

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For several years I’ve been studying inherited trauma, also known as multi-generational trauma or epigenetics. I began studying this in part to heal myself of the negative behaviors, beliefs, and patterns passed down through my ancestors to me. Also in part because I was having PTSD triggers for several years which intensified in 2016 to a point that in moments it was debilitating. I needed to understand what happened in my ancestral past (and past lives) so I could untangle the web of patterns and begin to heal. As I began to heal, so did my living family members, even if they don’t realize it.

One area I have barely touched until recently, related to military research and trauma, is the war loser’s story or ‘the bad guy’s’ story and how that impacts his or her descendants. Additionally, how that story, which we often ignore, also impacts the collective. We are all connected so what affects one affects all. When one heals, all heal.

The WWII German – The War Loser

It is said that history is written by the winners, not the losers. We all know the Allies won World War II. Germany came out as the loser again. In essence, they are “the bad guys” two wars in a row. A label that did not go away when the wars ended but are carried through negative emotions in the descendants of both wars still today, even two, three, or four generations down. Often unconsciously.

I have heard from German friends and colleagues and spiritual and mental health facilitators, that the shame of loss, what was done in the name of the Fatherland, and out of force, control, anger, and propaganda, was shoved away. Germans lost and had to carry that shame forever through all eternity. Their children and future descendants carry the sins of the father. Sins for which they may never be forgiven. The German people, like everyone else in the world, had to pick up when the war ended, start rebuilding, move on with life, and create a new reality – only for them, a divided country reality.

World War II also brought other trauma to these people when the Russians invaded, and also the Americans (which people do not like to speak of because we won the war). Rape, sexual abuse, numerous babies born not out of choice but force and hate. All this was swept under the rug and women shut up and moved on.

How do we begin to heal ‘The Bad Guys’ story?

It starts with descendants looking at their family tree and exploring the family patterns, negative and harmful beliefs that were passed down, and negative behaviors an individual carries. From here one can begin to unravel the tangled web and bring the dark aspects of their history to the light. See the lessons and release the old beliefs and pain. Will this cause physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual pain? Perhaps. We must feel the emotions in our bodies in order to heal them.

This healing can also be done with the winners looking at their family patterns and belief systems. I have heard many Dutch, Belgian, and French people say their grandparents or parents who survived the war hated the Germans. They would never forgive. They would not buy cars made by the Germans, etc. These feelings, whether spoken or not, were absorbed by the children of these survivors. Even in America we hear stories of our veterans returning home with such anger against the Germans for what they did (or the Japanese). It is not isolated only in Europe, these hateful angry feelings and beliefs.

When the winners look at their patterns and beliefs and their own feelings about the winners or losers, it allows those dark things to come to the light. Once we push our ego out of the way and see that the German who fought against our family member was doing his job, same as our veteran, and that neither may have wanted to be there, and both are souls having a human experience, we can begin to process the trauma that was inflicted and heal.

Not everyone can or will do this healing work and really look at the dark shadow sides of themselves, their beliefs, or their family history. It takes a strong, courageous person to dive into the darkness and do this work. When we heal ourselves, we heal everyone.

Israel and Palestine ‘Bad Guys’

A more current example of the trauma of the ‘bad guy’ comes from a book Wounds Into Wisdom by Rabbi Tirzah Firestone. In one story he tells of a Jewish man Avner who joined the Israeli military as he was required to do. He served his time and became a different person. In part of the story Tirzah tells in this book, she quotes Avner when he talks about being the bad guy.

“That was simply what we did. It was seen as the right thing to do. And of course, when it came time to go into the army, that was seen as the right thing to do. …….Because that’s what my dad did, that’s what my brother did. Why shouldn’t I?”

Do you see in the above paragraph how it was just accepted without question that you would “do the right thing” according to the family history, and yes in this case, the rules. We create more trauma for ourselves when we do things unconsciously and do not stop to question. The things we do on an unconscious level always have consequences later. Usually very uncomfortable consequences because we are not responding out of our intuition and what is truly the right thing to do. History repeats itself over and over as humanity continues to blindly obey instead of question.

He goes on to say, “In that sense, if I think of trauma – I had the trauma of being the bad guy. But understand, the main victims are the Palestinians. We are not the main victims. We are more the victimizers. And that in itself is traumatic.”

Avner not only had to deal with his ancestral Jewish trauma but also the trauma of being a victimizer. Something that has not been allowed to be brought to the surface according to the information within the story Tirzah tells.

The victimizers of World War II – in this article, the Germans – had that layer of trauma to also process and heal. It has been documented the children of German soldiers carry a lot of their parents war wounds. Much of it unspoken, unconscious, yet painfully there.

Where do we go from here?

Where do we go from here looking at these very brief examples of ancestral war trauma? First, we look at what our own family carries. What roles our families played in World War II, although you can use this for any mass trauma event whether global or local.

What beliefs do we have that may not be ours? What beliefs do we perpetuate onto our children and are they conscious or unconscious? Do we dislike or hate a certain country’s people because our parents and grandparents told us they were “bad”?

What stories have we heard about the winners and losers of the war? How did those stories shape our perspective of the war, trauma, our family’s habits and beliefs? How did those stories shape our emotional growth? Are emotions even something our families have or did they shut them down after the war to just survive and “move on”?

There are so many questions that can be asked and explored. Coming soon I’ll have new webinars and services to help you explore your family patterns and beliefs so you may also heal the past.

Are you ready to begin untangling and looking at your family’s war trauma? Or any other family trauma that has affected your life? If you would like assistance in this, contact me at info@wwiirwc.com to ask how I can help you. I use facilitation packages of 1, 3 or 5 hours to work with clients as we explore their genealogy and military histories, to find the patterns, and do energy healing together.

Are you ready to heal your past to live a fuller, more vibrant life with more possibilities?

© 2021 WWII Research & Writing Center