We must go through trials of fire in every family. Fires of varying brilliance place us before fundamental choices: should we repeat the lineage’s history or rise above it?
In a scenario of raging fire, unfavorable winds and persistent drought, the damage caused by a forest fire of the magnitudes we’re seeing these days in late July in the Community of Madrid, Ávila, Toledo, Girona, and Bordeaux, is an event as stressful in itself as for its consequences.
We know that trees with thicker bark are more resistant to fire, and younger ones, which lack the protective layer, cannot delay the direct flames’ effect. But the key is not only the age of the great guardians of forests, but in a thin skin called “cambium,” a plant tissue in permanent activity. The cambium is where the trees grow. Only if this layer is severely damaged will the tree not survive.
Ecological Memory and Family Memory
Knowing and changing what no longer applies. It may seem straightforward, but one must train oneself to escape false loyalties to the clan, overcome adverse “destiny,” and dare to take new steps in the face of tragic events.
What if we saw the lush trees as the grandparents of a plant species, those who guard memory (childhood) in their branches, leaves, and flowers, who over time managed to adapt, grow, reproduce, and bear fruit? Can we metaphorize and see in the vast lands laid waste by fire that devours entire forests a symbol of the families dragged by tragedies in their family trees?
Partially charred branches and trunks have a name that humanizes the forest world; they are called “creators of widows,” or “widowmakers“. Unlike a whole tree that groans as it falls, the charcoalized branches, weak and no longer supported by the main trunk, detach in complete silence, giving no time to react.
Therefore, the expression is used to refer to trees or branches that can fall without warning, with deadly consequences. The name originated among the loggers and forest workers of the 19th century, who coined the term due to the high rate of fatal accidents that left widows. Literal collapses and shattered families.
If fires are bulldozers against those majestic beings, habitat of insects and small animals, oxygen generators, bird nests, and an entire rich ecosystem that we do not appreciate at a glance, perhaps the same will happen to family forests.
Traumas, wars, xenophobic acts, displacements, earthquakes and droughts are the “human fires” that leave memory in ashes… Generation after generation persists in burning life, sinking into dramas that occurred 30 or 50 years ago. And not only is the present lost; in the rubble remains the scorched, blind, destructive memory.
A Reservoir for All
The Genealogical Society of Utah, founded on November 1, 1894, with the mission of identifying its ancestors, grew in volume of files and documents like an organized forest, but over the years, and with the accumulation of records, the edges fixed began to collapse.
In 1963, the collection had grown so much that it became necessary to bore into a mountain to store all the information collected. And in 1999, with that base, launched FamilySearch.org, the public platform accessible to everyone via the internet, which today counts a “world family tree.” Therefore it is the great human forest, the world’s largest genealogical organization.
Access to the database is directly possible through the official and free FamilySearch platform by creating a free account: a mandatory requirement to view the images of historical documents.
And in the search, go to “Records.” There you enter your ancestors’ names, dates or preserved data, narrowing by country, region, or any other element that helps trim the results.
Transgenerational studies aim to analyze the dimensions of the links between the past and the present to offer ways of life that are more conscious, coherent and healthy. Psychogenealogy is not a game of curiosity about uncles or great-grandparents, about banal anecdotes or searches for lost fortunes. It is a powerful tool for recognizing origin, one’s own conditions of action, and the possibilities to learn from events endured by our ancestors. A grand adventure of self-knowledge.
The Possibility of Cambium and Responding
Psychogenealogy helps us understand how to act in the face of family trauma, collective losses, and the resilience needed to recover memory and learn from the events lived in the past.
Many families travel what I call the “ecology of fire,” those inherited events that return and repeat because embers survive somewhere under the ground and resurface years later. How does this happen?
A secret leaves the surface of the family group on ashes that burn at every step. They are the effects of the silence that sows taboos, hides the roots, and makes it hard to voice what happened, no matter how shameful or terrible it has been. They are the “forgotten,” the excluded, the unspoken where there should have been water to wash and refresh the wounds. The secret acts like a layer of ash that covers the ground, concealing the roots and making it hard to speak of the past and walk with confidence, firm steps.
Are some families marked by tragedy? A fraud, a forced migration, children without recognition, or the tragic deaths that recur across generations will return if fires remain burning underground…
From transgenerational studies we say that when a painful event is not managed, when one is determined to maintain at all costs the loyalty to that suffering family member (and by loving loyalty one does not exit the loop of pain), conditions are created for a new “fire.”
Then, younger descendants will suffer the same traumatic situations so that the ancestor’s memory remains “alive.” Do you notice the contradiction? In many families it works like this: a misinterpreted love that prevents letting go and learning to avoid repeating.
Sometimes the loss of a clan member or the rupture of a bond through exile, or a divorce, or sibling disputes abruptly suppress the loving bond, erase a significant part of the shared history, amputate memories and interrupt the flow of communication. How will new generations repair that hole in the plot?
What Fire Does Not Destroy
Genealogical trees preserve jewels that we sometimes do not discover in our zeal to maintain an idealized image, to hide information (criminal or illicit), or to deny the realities of deprivation and illness experienced by ancestors.
It is not in denial, but in truth, where peace lies. To look fire in the face and not be dazzled. To look and act: to recognize the achievements that existed, to weed out the weeds that contaminate, to accept the sufferings and to value the winning solutions that one generation bequeaths to the next, constitute the forest in which we live as a tribe.
No fire destroys everything: the essential does not disappear. The ancestors always wait for the opportunity to be rescued because approaching their stories offers endless experiences that can help us choose what is healthiest in the present.
The family system calls for being seen in its entirety to activate its resilient capacity, rise from adversity and recognize the power that lies beneath the devastating fire.
The roots survive the exposure left by the scorched surface. We must be able to activate the “cambium,” that protective layer that returns our confidence in relationships, that promises a network of healing from traumas and dreams of stronger and healthier sprouts.
Callings, attitudes, renewed bonds. And rebuilding spaces: when the old structures give way to the younger ones, lessons can be capitalized positively. Step away from victimhood, coin new branches and care for potential risks differently. Integrate pain, accept it, but do not remain in the tragedy that paralyzes. Transform wounds into new relational ecosystems, with greater affective awareness, gratitude, and recognition for our elders.
The idea is to have more resources to survive and create new forests, fresh, healthy, adapted, and memory-rich.
Each of us is an infinitesimal part –valuable and unique– that constitutes the repository of human memory, the trees against oblivion.
Source: Diana Paris is a psychoanalyst, psychogenealogist. Author of Family Mandates, Family Secrets. Childless Women. Your Voice that Blooms (2026, co-authored with Ondi Paris), Del Nuevo Extremo publishing.
