Ancestral Grief, Epigenetics, and Your Mind-Body Connection (Grief Recovery & Healing Series part 6) [253]

Joy Lab | strengthen your mental health with the science of joy · Mar 1, 2026 · 1m

What if some of the grief you carry isn't entirely yours? In this episode we'll open what Francis Weller identified as the Fifth Gate of Grief: ancestral grief. We're talking about the unacknowledged, untended sorrows of those who came before us: lost languages, severed connections to land and ritual, collective traumas like war, displacement, and genocide. But we're also talking about the science; specifically, epigenetics and how it can help explain how those experiences literally get woven into our biology and passed down through generations, even when we don't know the stories. The good…