Generational Memory's Impact

The Eddy Network Podcast Episode 290

Nov 13, 2025

My grandmother, Helen Morrison.

Generational Memory - An Idea Defined

“Generational Memory is a remembrance of the Past that serves to clarify and define its relationship to the Present and the Future.”

It is not simply a memory. It is a memory that comes from a different time.

The memories of past generations of my family have served to inspire and guide me through my life and work. I’m sure this is true for you. It is true for all of us.

It is not my memories of past generations of my family.

It is the memories of my parents, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and family friends that constitutes the true source of generational memory.

Generational Memory is the Living History of Time. As a story is first told, it becomes a historical record. The stories of origin and belief become the memories of meaning and purpose for families and persons. It is the memory that transcends time and establishes the bond for a people to share.

It is primitive and tribal. It is where the wisdom of the ages is found. The generational memory that endures resonates with truth and life across time.

Generational memory echoes in the present and transcends the moment and the recording.

For some of us, our generational memory is visual. I can see the houses where my childhood friends lived. I see where I was sitting in my fifth-grade classroom when President Kennedy’s assassination was announced. I can see every room in both grandparents’ homes after almost 60 years.

For others, their generational memory is aural or verbal. They remember what they heard. They can quote Cousin Mark’s description of the celebrity none of us had ever heard of. They remember the lyrics of songs, the rhythm of jokes, and the dialog from an old film.

For others, generational memory is abstract and conceptual. They can describe the family tree going back a dozen generations. They remember who married whom, who worked for whom, where they lived, and how the generations of the family stuck together and splintered over time.

This is the memory of the past that becomes be captured and written for biographies and history texts. The stories are some of the primary sources for that which we see as the authentic history of the past. However, without generational memory, the history of persons and places eventually would be lost. Generational memory is not a static thing, but a living exchange between people, Past and Present.

Generational Memory is a Relational experience. It is not the history found in books. It is rather the sensory history embodied through our whole being.

It is remembering what it was like playing in the creek behind your house or climbing the tall tree in the front yard of your grandma’s house. It is the conversations in the dorm after your team lost the national championship. It is that first date that led to many more and ultimately a wedding that people still talk about. We remember the moments that touch us. They don’t remain memories but reasons to recall and relive them.

Generational Memory is a product of the past experience of suffering, trial, and overcoming hardship. Hardship and difficulty linger longer in our memory than success or happiness. We remember moments of exhilaration because they were singular experiences in time. Yet, those moments of regret and loss linger with us, reminding us of what we could have done differently. The generational memory of trauma stays with us, locked into the body as a constant presence of what once was.

Generational Memory is formed in awareness and remembrance of how past generations responded to change. If one of your parents died while you were young, or lost their job, you remember the world as fragile and uncertain. For many, these experiences are wiped away to forget what happened. Then there are the inspirational moments when a friend saved a life or achieved success that was unexpected. All this makes us aware that time is not linear and progressive, but complex and constantly changing.

Generational memory is familial, and the basis of the communal. Without family, community becomes transactional and institutional; without community, the self becomes a means of utility for the mechanism of society. For those whose life experience lacks family or community, the present moment is their generational memory. It can take on an emptiness and longing for deeper awareness. The past does not resonate and the future does not inspire.

Generational memory is a fully embodied type of Consciousness. Modern Consciousness is focused on Being in Time. The Past and the Future serve the Present. For many this consciousness has no place for the Past or the Present. As I have written for a character in a novel that I am writing,

“There is no Past, nor Future. Only the Now.

Everything that once was in time has vanished into simulation.”

Through Generational Memory, we are aware that our life experience or how I understand my Being in Time, establishes a continuity of time from the Past through the Present to the Future.

Today, we are the products of the Generational Memory of past generations. Whether those generations are family or historical figures whose lives have touched our lives in some way, we are living out of the collective memory of past generations.

Not only that, and this may be the most important thing I say here, we are creating the Generational Memories that future generations will draw upon to live their lives.

Generational memory is a constant of time. It reminds us that The Eternal Present is dependent on the Past of Generational Memory for meaning and perspective for living in the moment.