How Trauma Is Passed Through Generations – What Syria Taught Me About Inheritance

I’ve met people who carry wounds they can’t name. They speak of anxiety without cause, sorrow without memory, rage without explanation. These are not their traumas, they say. And yet, they live with them as if they were.

If you’re Syrian or from any culture marked by war, exile, or genocide, you’ve likely seen it too. A child flinching at loud noises, a parent who can’t talk about their past, a grandparent who never speaks of their childhood. In many ways, the body remembers what the mind cannot.

That’s how trauma is passed through generations, not just in stories, but in silences.

Inheritance Beyond Blood- The Science of Epigenetic Memory

I used to think inheritance meant genes, heirlooms, and family stories. But now, we know trauma can be passed down biologically. The field of epigenetics is showing us that stress, war, and fear leave molecular fingerprints, tiny changes that can shape how future generations react to the world.

Studies on Holocaust survivors’ children, descendants of genocide survivors, and communities affected by colonization have all revealed something startling: trauma doesn’t die with the person who experienced it. It echoes in their descendants.

In Syria, this isn’t theory. It’s real life.

What Generational Trauma Looks Like in Syrian Families

I have friends, brilliant, educated, resilient, who are terrified of paperwork. To someone outside, it’s baffling. But for Syrians, paperwork can mean checkpoints, surveillance, or conscription. A missing stamp can mean arrest. That fear has seeped into the next generation, even those who’ve never seen a checkpoint.

One woman told me her son has nightmares about being trapped in a house under attack. He’s six. He’s never seen war. But his mother was nine months pregnant when their home was shelled in Aleppo by Islamist forces.

This is what it means when we say trauma is passed through generations. It’s not only a metaphor. It’s muscle memory. It’s an inherited fear.

The Role of Culture, Silence, and Storytelling

Science explains part of it, but culture plays a role too. In many Arab households, especially among older generations, we don’t always talk about trauma. We bury it beneath hospitality, duty, or religious faith. We move forward because what choice do we have?

But silence doesn’t erase pain. It fossilizes it.

When children grow up sensing grief but never understanding it, they create stories to fill the void. Sometimes those stories are about shame, blame, or guilt. Other times, they’re about survival. And that’s where storytelling, real, honest storytelling, becomes essential.

This is one reason I write.

Literature as a Tool for Healing and Understanding

In Damascus Has Fallen, I tried to capture the emotional texture of life in wartime Syria, not just the violence, but the moral ambiguity, the fear of becoming numb, the grief of being forgotten. These aren’t just stories; they’re mirrors.

When I hear from readers who say, “That’s what my father was like,” or “I finally understand my aunt’s silence,” I feel a quiet kind of purpose. Literature can’t fix everything, but it can give shape to what’s unspoken. It can validate what people carry, even if they don’t have the words for it.

That’s why I believe books like Guard Thy Heart or Le temps d’une saison aren’t just novels. They are conversations across generations, about what was lost, what was survived, and what still lingers.

Breaking the Cycle Without Forgetting the Story

There’s a delicate balance between honoring the past and not letting it own us. Healing generational trauma isn’t about erasing history. It’s about naming it, understanding it, and choosing what to carry forward.

I don’t believe in pretending the past didn’t happen. But I do believe we can choose how we respond to its weight.

Talk to your children. Share your story. Listen to theirs. Write it down. Let silence end with you.

That’s how healing begins, not just in therapy rooms or university labs, but at the dinner table, in the pages of a novel, in a poem passed from father to daughter.

If we acknowledge how trauma is passed through generations, then we can begin the work of transforming pain into memory, and memory into meaning.