Witchful Thinking: On Pedestals and Power and Unpleasant Ancestors

Every family tree, I don’t care who you are, has some bad apples on it.

Maybe you have an ancestor who was a slaveholder.

Maybe your grandfather sexually abused your mom.

Maybe one of your great uncles on your mom’s side was responsible for an accident that killed dozens of people.

You don’t get to choose the accident of your birth and therefore you are stuck with your ancestors, such as they are. And by stuck with them, I mean that somewhat literally. Families have traditions, patterns of established behavior that are not always positive. Abuse, both physical and emotional, often gets passed down from parent to child. But it may even be more than that. We are just now seeing in DNA research that “generational trauma” might be a real thing — that ancestors who experience trauma might pass on negative impacts to their children. The Bible talks about the sins of the father being visited upon the children, and apparently that’s not just a pretty turn of phrase.

And just as even very nice upstanding families will have problematic people lurking about the family tree, organizations and groups of people often have unpleasant memories of past members, even past leaders. Thomas Jefferson may be a founding father of our country and an…