Just Like Nana

Zipa Leah Scheinberg is here to discuss her BITES Framework to decode how developmental wounds pass down through generations. She also explores how interrupted childhood development can safely resume, allowing descendants to move from survival adaptations into true sovereignty, emotional resilience, and ancestral belonging.

About Zipa Leah Scheinberg

Zipa Leah Scheinberg is a clinical social worker, developmental trauma theorist, and author with nearly two decades of clinical experience and training. Growing up as the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who survived Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Zipa Leah spent her life seeking to name and map the unseen war wounds and interrupted childhoods passed down through family lines. She is the creator of the BITES Framework, designed to decode developmental trauma and help individuals rebuild core capacities in adulthood. Zipa Leah is the author of the forthcoming books Belonging (a hands-on experiential workbook) and Developmental Trauma Decoded. 

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Map "What Didn't Happen" (The Cartography of Absence): Trauma recovery requires examining not just the bad events that occurred, but mapping the absence of essential developmental needs—such as safety, affection, warmth, and adequate protection—during childhood.
• Decode Developmental Wounds with the BITES Framework: Interrupted childhood development impacts five core domains: Belonging (feeling welcome in the world), Identity (knowing who you are), Trust (relying on your own intuition), Existential meaning (knowing you matter), and Shame vs. Dignity (moving beyond avoiding pain).
• Reframe "Pathology" as Adaptations That Made Sense: Behaviors like people-pleasing, codependency, or making yourself small aren't permanent broken traits; they are brilliant childhood survival adaptations that can be re-developed in adulthood.
• Differentiate Symptom Management from True Healing: While symptom reduction helps you reach an "okay" baseline, genuine healing expands your nervous system's capacity to experience a full range of emotions, exercise internal agency, and safely receive goodness.
• Balance Developmental Grief with Generational Hope: Healing ancestral trauma allows interrupted development to resume, sending a felt sense of strength, dignity, and light both backward to honor past ancestors and forward to future generations.

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Theme music written and performed by Carter Penny.

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Melany Oliver discusses healing from deep emotional wounds and dysfunctional family systems, as well as how facing your emotional truth, building capacity for inner child work, and using your sincere heart's desire can help you unhook from ancestral trauma and heal from the inside out.

About Melany

Melany Oliver is an intuitive life coach and emotional healing specialist with a Bachelor of Science (Honors) in Complementary Therapies focused on Health Sciences from the University of Westminster in London. With over 15 years of experience as a spiritual guide and trauma healing coach, Melany specializes in helping women heal deep emotional wounds, overcome childhood trauma, and release toxic relationship patterns. After navigating her own extensive healing journey—moving through extreme childhood abuse, addiction, and decades of therapeutic exploration—Melany now guides clients to step into their true internal power through heart-based emotional processing, sincerity, and facing inner emotional truth.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Reclaim Your Internal Healing Power: True, lasting emotional empowerment doesn't come from giving your power away to external tools or quick fixes; it begins within your own heart when you cultivate a sincere desire to face your emotional truth.
• Understand the Depth of the Mother Wound: Because we spend nine months in the womb absorbing our mother's emotional state, unhealed maternal trauma and suppressed emotions get projected directly onto developing children, shaping their early sense of self-worth and safety.
• Unhook from Ancestral Trauma Through Inner Child Work: You don't always need to analyze every past generational event to heal; by processing your own childhood wounds, accepting truth, and reclaiming your self-worth, you naturally stop taking on projected trauma.
• Build Emotional Resilience to Feel, Not Intellectualize: Fear of being overwhelmed often causes us to suppress deep emotions or dissociate. Building capacity to sit with physical body sensations for just five minutes a day helps safely release stored grief and anger without fighting the feeling.
• Differentiate Force from Heart-Based Will: Willpower driven by the ego relies on force and resistance, whereas true heart-centered desire is effortless, grounded in love, and opens the door for genuine forgiveness and emotional release.

Connect with Melany Oliver

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Theme music written and performed by Carter Penny.

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A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Meghana Nayak is here to discuss how catastrophic political events, such as Partition, trigger epigenetic tags, physical health vulnerabilities, and systemic family silences that echo across generations. She also explores how examining perpetrator legacies, engaging in political solutions, and honoring non-linear storytelling can help us realign inherited cycles, heal ancestral burdens, and restore true collective resilience.

About Meghana

Meghana V. Nayak is a Professor of Political Science and Chair of the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at Pace University-NYC. Her research, teaching, and advocacy focus on gender and racial violence, particularly against migrant communities. With Sara Shroff, she co-edits the Conversations section of the International Feminist Journal of Politics, where they curate a special series on restorative and reparative dialogues.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Understand Intergenerational Trauma as a Legacy Burden: Ancestral trauma is an invisible residue or "soul wound"—a cumulative emotional and psychological stress passed down when past generations lacked the safety or capacity to process catastrophic events.
• Recognize the Epigenetic & Physical Markers of History: Severe historical events, such as enforced famines or war displacements, leave epigenetic tags that alter gene expression, leaving descendants uniquely vulnerable to physical health conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular stress.
• Shift from "Breaking" to Realigning Cycles: Instead of pathologizing family systems by focusing on "breaking" cycles, reframe the work as realigning relationships—replacing silence, abuse, and estrangement with truth, emotional awareness, and new family rituals.
• Examine Perpetrator Legacies & Structural Privilege: Lineage healing requires looking at both sides of history; acknowledging dominant caste, class, or white supremacy privileges allows descendants to dismantle systemic oppression without getting stuck in unproductive shame or guilt.
• Connect Personal Healing to Political Solutions: Individual therapy is only one piece of the puzzle; ending intergenerational trauma requires active community solidarity, anti-racism, and dismantling the ongoing systemic violence that continues to trigger human nervous systems.

Resources

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson
• My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem 
• What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo
• Nervous by Jen Soriano
• Dr. Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart
• Asian Mental Health Collective

Connect with Meghana Nayak

Theme music written and performed by Carter Penny.

Connect with Just Like Nana's Website.

A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Wednesdae Reim Ifrach is here to discuss the biological, psychological, and historical layers of inherited stress and reveals how somatic inquiry, creative expression, and intentional play serve as powerful tools for liberation.

They also discuss how engaging your innate creativity can rewire your nervous system, restore true belonging, and transform generational wounds into ancestral joy.

About Wednesdae

Wednesdae Reim Ifrach is an expressive arts therapist, artist, and scholar whose work explores embodiment, queer identity, trauma healing, and creative practice. Through art, research, and somatic therapy, their work examines how creative expression becomes a pathway for reclaiming the body and transforming trauma.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Understand the Three Layers of Ancestral Trauma: Intergenerational trauma manifests across three distinct dimensions: biological/epigenetic (where trauma shortens telomeres and impacts physical/reproductive health), psychological/relational (learned insecure attachments and family behavioral patterns), and historical (systemic oppression, marginalization, and collective trauma).
• Reframe the "Black Sheep" as the Well One: Seeking emotional intelligence, boundaries, and therapy within a dysfunctional family system often positions you as the family "black sheep," but breaking rigid family norms is actually a brave act of lineage healing.
• Use Creativity as a Somatic Bridge: Expressive arts—such as drawing, singing, dancing, and movement—operate as a somatic bridge between non-verbal right-brain memories and logical left-brain processing, helping the central nervous system safely discharge stored survival stress.
• Reclaim Belonging Beyond Biological Lines: For queer, trans, or marginalized individuals experiencing familial estrangement, healing involves acknowledging the grief of lost origin stories while actively stepping into the broader, joyful ancestral lineage of chosen family and cultural history.
• Cultivate Daily "Glimmers" and Joy: Counteract chronic fight, flight, freeze, or fawn responses by intentionally inviting low-pressure, creative moments into your daily routine—like spinning in a desk chair, using colored pencils, or singing along to a favorite song—to resource your nervous system.

Connect with Wednesdae

Instagram

Substack

Wednesdae's Grandmas are pictured in the episode art.

Theme music written and performed by Carter Penny.

Connect with Just Like Nana's Website.

A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

*Content Warning: Discussion of sexual abuse*

Sheila O’Connor is here to discuss her book Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments, Facts, and Fictions and the journey of uncovering the story of her grandmother who was incarcerated at age 15 for so-called "immorality". She also explores how breaking family secrets, embracing imaginative empathy, and uncovering historical truths can help us heal intergenerational trauma and honor the ancestral gifts carried within our bloodlines.  

About Sheila

Sheila O’Connor is the author of six award-winning novels for adults and young people. She's won the Minnesota Book Award, the Michigan Prize for Literary Fiction, and the International Reading Award. Her books have also been included on several Best Books of the Year lists.

She has been the recipient of several winning grants and fellowships. She is a professor emeritus at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where she also served as the fiction editor for Waterstone Review. Her book, Evidence of V: A Novel in Fragments: Facts and Fictions is based on the research she did on her unknown maternal grandmother and the little-known practice of incarcerating girls, sometimes as young as eight years old for “immorality” in Minnesota and across the United States.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Recognize the Physical Impact of Hidden Family Secrets: Even when family secrets are kept from you, your body and intuition pick up on missing narratives, often manifesting as unexplained emotional blocks, mental health struggles, or somatic responses.
• Understand the Historical Systemic Incarceration of Young Girls: Historically across America, thousands of young girls and children (as young as eight) were sentenced to long prison terms at reformatories under vague charges like "immorality" or "incorrigibility," particularly if they were victims of sexual abuse or became pregnant.
• Harness Imaginative Empathy for Healing: When official historical records fall short, imaginative empathy allows us to go beyond clinical facts to feel what our ancestors experienced, restoring dignity, vindication, and depth to their stolen stories.
• Break Intergenerational Repetition Loops: Unacknowledged trauma often repeats across generations. Bringing historical facts to light breaks the pattern of erasure and secret-keeping, allowing families to stop passing down inherited burdens.
• Reclaim Ancestral Gifts Alongside Trauma: Lineages do not just pass down survival wounds; they also carry artistic talents, musical abilities, and deep creative gifts that reconnect descendants to their ancestors' true essence.

Resources

The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline Study

Minnesota History Center

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Theme music written and performed by Carter Penny.

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A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Content Warning: Discussion of suicide.

Juliet Patterson is the author of Sinkhole: A Legacy of Suicide, which explores how suicide shaped her family line. She also discusses how breaking generational silences, reconnecting with the land and local communities, and cultivating somatic awareness can help us heal inherited grief and reclaim our true sense of belonging. 

About Juliet

Juliet Patterson is the author of Sinkhole: A Legacy of Suicide (Milkweed Editions, September 2022), finalist for the 2023 Minnesota Book Awards and named one of the best memoirs of 2022 by Library Journal. She has also published two full-length poetry collections, Threnody, (Nightboat Books 2016), a finalist for the 2017 Audre Lorde Poetry Award, and The Truant Lover, (Nightboat Books, 2006), winner of the Nightboat Poetry Prize and a finalist for the 2006 Lambda Literary Award. A recipient of the Arts & Letters Susan Atefat Prize in non-fiction, and a Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize, she has also been awarded fellowships from the Jerome Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Minneapolis-based Creative Community Leadership Institute (formerly the Institute for Community and Creative Development). She teaches creative writing at St. Olaf College and Augsburg University’s low-residency MFA program. She lives in Minneapolis with her family.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Understand Inherited Grief and Generational Silences: Unaddressed family trauma and shame create inherited grief—an unspoken emotional weight that children absorb and carry somatically in their bodies long before they learn the facts.
• Reconnect with Land and Place as Somatic Anchors: Human beings are deeply mammalian; reconnecting with the physical land, environment, and regional geography helps ground us, allowing space to process complex grief that feels too heavy for everyday life.
• Break Free from Rigid Family Roles: Family systems often assign surface-level roles to avoid difficult feelings. Reclaiming emotional honesty and practicing vulnerability helps disrupt stilted patterns and allows each family member to express their full humanity.
• Examine the Pressures of Traditional Masculinity: Three generations of male suicide highlight how societal expectations of traditional, stoic masculinity force men to repress deep emotional sensitivity and isolate themselves instead of seeking community support.
• Cultivate Somatic Self-Awareness Daily: Simple somatic practices—such as checking in with how your body feels when you're upset or walking barefoot on the earth—help reconnect the mind and body, breaking the cycle of emotional detachment.

Resources

• Jonathan Foer
• All About Love by bell hooks 
• Pema Chödrön

Connect with Juliet Patterson

Juliet's paternal Grandma Leah Kennedy Patterson is pictured in the episode art.

Theme music written and performed by Carter Penny.

Connect with Just Like Nana's Website.

A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Jen Gallagher is here to break the silence around women's rage. She explains why anger is a vital, neurobiological survival system and how accessing somatic wisdom helps us alchemize inherited emotional patterns. Learn how to dismantle the taboo around rage, heal ancestral silences, and discover the clarity, power, and freedom on the other side.

About Jen

Jen Gallagher is a therapist, writer and activist with over 20 years of clinical experience. She's passionate about breaking the silence around women's rage in midlife, and dedicated to helping women discover the clarity and power in their own rage.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Recognize Rage as Accumulated Anger: Neurobiologically, rage is a primary subcortical brain system. Unlike fleeting anger, rage is the accumulation of decades of suppressed boundary violations, unmet needs, and unresolved systemic or personal traumas.
• Understand the Purpose of Anger: Anger acts as a critical alarm system that signals when a boundary is violated, when we need to pull back to protect ourselves, or when our nervous system is overtaxed and flooded.
• Bypass Cognitive Talk Therapy with Somatic Metaphor: Because rage lives deep in the subcortical brain beyond conscious words, untangling it requires visceral, somatic, and experiential approaches like non-dominant hand drawing, color mapping, and imagery.
• Trace Systemic and Ancestral Patterns: Unexpressed rage often stems from family systems where ancestors had to suppress their anger just to survive. Placing your personal feelings within a multi-generational genealogy helps remove individual shame and spreads the emotional weight across history.
• Balance Regulation and Activation for Real Change: The brain cannot rewire itself if it is completely calm or overwhelmingly flooded; real emotional transformation happens at the intersection of nervous system regulation and gentle emotional activation.

Resources

Juliane Taylor Shore

Learn more about genograms:

Connect with Jen Gallagher

Episode art features Jen's Grandma.

Theme music written and performed by Carter Penny.

Connect with Just Like Nana's Website.

A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Rebecca Ratcliff discusses how stored ancestral trauma and unintegrated soul fragments live within our electromagnetic fields, and how bridging Western medical science with indigenous shamanic practices, soul retrieval, and ancestral sacredness can help you break inherited trauma loops and reclaim your complete, integrated self.

About Rebecca

Rebecca Ratcliff is a retired Family Medicine physician and spiritual healer who combines Western medical expertise with Indigenous Peruvian Shamanic practices to address the root causes of illness. After earning her Medical Degree from Rush University and completing her residency at the University of New Mexico and fellowship at Maricopa County Health Systems, she trained extensively in Andean healing traditions with Alberto Villoldo and Jose Luis Herrera, practicing Shamanic healing alongside medicine starting in 2006. Now practicing full-time in coordination with Twin Cities physicians and therapists, Dr. Ratcliff uses her background to help clients transform developmental and ancestral trauma, offering complementary Shamanic care for chronic physical and psychological conditions by bridging traditional wisdom with holistic healing.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Understand the Multidimensional Human Continuum: Western medicine excels at addressing the dense, 3D mechanical body (such as physical trauma or surgeries), but shamanic healing works with the surrounding electromagnetic and quantum fields that inform physical tissue and store emotional trauma.
• Integrate Lost Soul Fragments via Quantum Soul Retrieval: Traumatic childhood events or ancestral war experiences can cause fragments of the soul to stay trapped in another time and space; soul retrieval reintegrates those parts into the present body to restore wholeness and remove long-standing blocks.
• Shift from Historical Isolation to Sacred Connection: Western culture often leaves individuals feeling like "spiritual orphans" detached from nature. Reconnecting with the inherent sacredness of the land, mountain spirits, and ancestral lineages provides a deep, supportive container for lasting transformation.
• Differentiate Unhealed Ancestors from Healed Guides: When connecting with your lineage, practice discernment by intentionally calling upon your healed ancestors—those who have transitioned to a healed vibrational state and can act as loving co-workers in your healing journey.
• Reclaim Internal Authority Over Illness: Recognize the limitations of conventional medicine. If medical workups come back normal yet physical or emotional distress remains, look beyond the 3D model to address energetic imbalances and inherited family trauma.

Connect with Rebecca Ratcliff

Email: [email protected]

Theme music written and performed by Carter Penny.

Connect with Just Like Nana's Website.

A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Iya Affo, founder of Heal Historical Trauma and trauma specialist, is discussing the details of integrating versus healing ancestral trauma in our lives, as well as regulating your nervous system and tending to the living altar of your body.

About Iya

Iya Affo is the founder of Heal Historical Trauma, a Culturalist, and a Western-certified Trauma Specialist whose lifelong work bridges indigenous healing traditions and neurobiology. Descended from a lineage of spiritual and physical healers with heritage spanning West Africa and the Caribbean, she integrates over 35 years of client experience with formal certifications in models like Dr. Bruce Perry's Neurosequential Model for Caregiving, Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI), and Native American-based trauma programs. Having lived, studied, and collaborated with indigenous, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, and Native American communities across more than 30 countries, Iya is an international speaker, author, and educator who advocates for the harmonization of Traditional and Western medicine to cultivate holistic healing, reculturing, and resilience for disempowered populations worldwide. 

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Distinguish Historical Trauma from Ancestral Trauma: Historical trauma acts as the macro-level event (such as systemic violence or colonization), while ancestral trauma is how that macro event gets localized within a specific family's home life, cellular memory, and relational conditioning.
• Shift from Abstract "Healing" to Embodied Integration: Rather than trying to erase painful historical events, focus on integration—using ancestral rituals and somatic practices to process past pain so it increases your capacity to navigate adversity.
• Regulate Your Nervous System from the Bottom Up: Your neurobiology drives your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Decreasing stress hormones (cortisol, adrenaline) and boosting feel-good neurotransmitters (dopamine, oxytocin) automatically changes how you think, feel, and relate to others.
• Utilize Rhythmic and Lateral Movement for Nervous System Regulation: Simple, rhythmic activities like swinging, hula-hooping, or walking (which induces rapid lateral eye movements similar to EMDR) calm dysregulated nervous system patterns that may have been passed down for generations.
• Tend to the Living Altar of Your Body: You are not starting from scratch; your physical body is the living altar of thousands of generations who survived before you. Honor your lineage by distinguishing the "fire" (creativity, strength, endurance) from the "ash" (outdated coping mechanisms) and making conscious space for your ancestors in your daily life.

Resources

https://www.emdr.com/about-the-emdr-institute/

Connect with Iya Affo

Episode art features Iya's Grandma Wilhelmina Beatrice.

Theme music written and performed by Carter Penny.

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A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Energy healer Missy Toy Ozeas discusses how hidden, inherited patterns and ancestral trauma keep us trapped in survival mode, and how to identify subconscious blocks and unlock energetic sovereignty.

About Missy Toy Ozeas

Missy Toy Ozeas is an energy healer and intuitive guide. She helps accomplished, heart-centered leaders find and release the hidden beliefs keeping them from their full power. She’s led thousands of sessions with clients all over the world — Hollywood creatives, wellness entrepreneurs, musicians, activists, artists — and she specializes in one thing: finding the exact belief that's running the show beneath the surface, tracing it to its origin, and clearing it so everything downstream can shift.

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Distinguish Mindset from Energy Problems: When you keep hitting a wall despite doing "all the right things," you are likely dealing with stored childhood or ancestral energy rather than a lack of strategy or effort.
• Trace Trapped Beliefs to the Lineage: Subconscious limiting beliefs—such as "having money isn't safe"—can originate from an ancestor's traumatic survival experience and are passed down through your family line.
• Perform Energetic Witnessing to Clear Blocks: Ancestors long to be seen and acknowledged; simply witnessing their original fear or story with compassion allows stored energy to balance and release.
• Cultivate Energetic Sovereignty: Sovereignty means taking radical personal responsibility for your own energy field—walking through the world with "nothing to defend and nothing to prove" while giving others 100% permission to be themselves.
• Engage Your Lineage Through Simple Intention: You do not need a complete family tree or historical records to connect with your lineage; taking an intentional walk and inviting your ancestors to join you moves energy immediately.

Resources

More information on the Clairs

Connect with Missy Toy Ozeas

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YouTube

Episode art features Missy's Popo Louise Fong.

Theme music written and performed by Carter Penny.

Connect with Just Like Nana's Website.

A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.