The Scorching Effects of Generational Trauma

What happens when the wounds of abuse don’t just scar the heart but also leave lasting damage on the body? For me, trauma didn’t stay hidden in my past — it showed up in my health, reshaping the course of my life from the time I was a child.

When Trauma Leaves Scars on the Body

One night, a few years ago, I lay on the couch curled up tight in my husband’s arms, hot tears streaming down my face.

“I may be able to protect our future children from ever meeting or spending time with my father, but I will not be able to protect them from being raised by a chronically ill mother,” I whispered.

That night was one of those difficult nights.

How Trauma and Illness Collided

I became deathly ill with a devastating, lifelong, incurable digestive disease when I was just eleven years old. It’s rare for a child so young to develop Crohn’s — a disease often brought on by severe stress or a life-altering crisis.

But in my case, it wasn’t a surprise. The year my body began to show strange symptoms was the same year my father’s sexual addiction caused an earthquake in our family. Within two years of the start of his abuse, I was diagnosed with the worst case of Crohn’s Disease my doctors had ever seen. My physician confirmed I had likely lived with it for two years already.

There is no mistaking it: I developed Crohn’s Disease as a direct result of my father’s emotional, physical, and sexual abuse.

Building a New Life

My journey since that diagnosis has not been an easy one. Healing has required years of intentional work, layer by layer. I have sat in more than two hundred hours of therapy, doing the painful work of naming what was done to me, facing the memories I would rather bury, and letting someone else walk with me into those darkest places.

Forgiveness was not a one-time act, but a long, hard process. Choosing to forgive was not about was excusing what happened, staying quiet, or choosing to not pursue justice; rather it was a choice to relinquish my desire for vengeance and trust in God for the full justice that I could not possible receive on this earth. That choice opened the door to peace, though it did not erase the scars.

Along the way, God brought me a husband who embodies tenderness and gentleness. He is a kind man who cherishes me in ways that stand in stark contrast to the way I was once treated. His steady love has been a constant reminder that not all men harm, and that I am worthy of being protected and adored.

Out of that foundation of safety and healing, I discovered a calling. I now work as an advocate and coach, using my voice and my story to come alongside other survivors. Walking with women who feel trapped, silenced, or unseen has given purpose to my pain. What once nearly destroyed me has now become the very thing that motivates me to help others.

Yet even with all the work I've done to pursue healing, I cannot escape the reality that my body still bears the scars. My soul may be at peace, but I live each day carrying the physical consequences of what was done to me.

And this is where my heart aches most: while I may be able to protect my future children from ever knowing my father, I cannot protect them from the ripple effects of his harm. My health has been permanently compromised. My future children will grow up watching their mother endure chronic pain, and that reality breaks me in ways I cannot always put into words.

The Nature of Abuse

Abuse affects everyone. Like hot lava from a volcano, it scorches and devours almost everything in its path.

But as destructive as abuse is, we are cared for by an even greater God who loves to redeem — bringing forth new life from blackened ground. Sometimes He redeems the abuser through repentance. Sometimes He redeems the survivor through rescue, binding up wounds, and restoring identity. One way or another, He has a way of taking shattered pieces and re-making them into vessels of healing.

Finding Blessings in Limitations

I have a friend who also carries a chronic illness that traces back to her trauma. She is the mother of four beautiful children. When we talk, she sometimes admits how heavy it feels to tell her kids that she can’t do certain things other moms can do — like run in the yard for hours, or stay up late for spontaneous adventures. At times, she has shared the heartbreak she feels watching her children adapt to her limitations.

And yet, she has also shared something profound with me.

She told me, “Emily, as much as I wish I could give them a healthy mom, I also see how God is shaping their little hearts in ways that may never have happened otherwise."

Her children are learning, right now, lessons many adults struggle to grasp — compassion, patience, and tenderness toward the vulnerable. Instead of seeing their mother’s weakness as a burden, they are practicing what it means to love someone through their fragility. Yes, this means her kids sometimes have more time with an Ipad than she's prefer, but while she is learning to let go of the mom guilt, her children are learning kindness and flexibility toward her when she can't be as active as they wish she could be.

She often says that these lessons, though born out of sorrow, will go with her children into their adulthood -- shaping not just their own lives, but the lives of every person they love in the future.

Hope for the Wounded

If you still carry the physical scars of abuse or trauma, please know: God has not forgotten you. Your abuser did not derail God’s will for your life. No one is that powerful.

You are God’s beloved child — perfectly whole and enough. Yes, ENOUGH. Not because of what you’ve done, but because Jesus is enough for you.

Know this: you are exactly where God wants you to be right now. He delights in redeeming your pain so that none of it is wasted.

“For with the LORD there is gracious love, along with abundant redemption.”
— Psalm 130:7

Full Circle

As I think back to that night on the couch — my husband’s arms wrapped around me, my tears soaking his shirt, my fears spilling out in whispered words — I realize that moment holds both the ache and the hope of my story. The ache of knowing I cannot erase the scars my father’s selfishness carved into my body. But also the hope of knowing that even in my weakness, God’s redemption is at work.

And just as my husband held me in my sorrow, my Heavenly Father holds me in every moment — reminding me that pain is not the end of the story. Redemption is.

~ Emily Elizabeth Anderson