7 Books on Intergenerational Healing

Top picks for books on intergenerational trauma and healing from a therapist.

Break the Cycle: A Guide to Healing Intergenerational Trauma by Mariel Buqué

This book is an approachable guide to recognizing intergenerational trauma . I like how the author strikes a balance between personal stories, clinical examples, and actionable steps. Her book is filled with practical information on how to become a cycle breaker.

Emotional Inheritance: A Therapist, Her Patients, and the Legacy of Trauma by Galit Atlas.

Galit Atlas, a psychoanalyst, has extensively explored how the “ghosts” of unspoken grief, pain, and silence become emotional inheritances. She says that “old family secrets live inside us" and that "what haunts us are not the dead, but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others." This book is one of my favorite accounts of what happens in the therapy room. She traces how unspoken secrets are spoken and transmuted through therapy. She also wrote an accompanying workbook focused on this topic.

The Pain We Carry Workbook: Healing from Complex PTSD for People of Color by Natalie Y. Gutiérrez

This book focuses on repeated trauma, including discrimination and interpersonal violence, held within the broader legacy of intergenerational trauma. As one of the few resources that explicitly focuses on how people of color experience complex post-traumatic stress disorder (C-PTSD), the book offers powerful tools to heal from repeated trauma. The author also has a workbook titled The Pain We Carry Workbook: Heal Racial Trauma, Reclaim Ancestral Wisdom, and Ignite Your Soul’s Liberation.

Mother Hunger: How Adult Daughters Can Understand and Heal from Lost Nurturance, Protection, and Guidance by Kelly McDaniel

Kelly McDaniel coined the term Mother Hunger to refer to an invisible wound that emerges from missing comfort, safety, or guidance from your mother. In her heart-felt book, she explores how Mother Hunger is passed down in unhelpful patterns, including an unhealthy relationship to food and sex. She writes movingly of how Mother Hunger manifests and can be tended to.

Listening When Parts Speak: A Practical Guide to Healing with Internal Family Systems Therapy and Ancestor Wisdom by Tamala Floyd

Tamala Floyd is a leader trainer with the Internal Family Systems (IFS) Institute. It is from her that I learned the revolutionary way that we can identify and release legacy burdens through therapy, offering healing to those who come before and after us. Her book centers on how to connect with the wisdom and guidance of ancestors and offer healing through the ancestral line.

Borderlands / La Frontera by Gloria Anzaldúa

In this classic book, the author examines intergenerational trauma through the lens of colonialism, oppression, and displacement within Mexican American communities. She writes poignantly of fractured identity, cultural dislocation, and nepantla, or a constant state of in-betweenness. The author situates the borderlands as a site of trauma, including as a psychological state fraught with contradiction, violence, and alienation. She offers a “third space” — the borderlands as site of resistance, hybridity, and reclamation.

Zami: A New Spelling of by Name by Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde’s book is a bildungsroman of sorts, a biomythography which deftly explores the intersections between racism, intergenerational trauma, and displacement. In her book, Lorde reworks trauma and boldly draws power and strength from erotic and embodied memories.