Breaking the Chain: Healing Racial Trauma in the Body:
The second generation had never actually experienced an electric shock, but the trauma of that had been passed down through their father’s DNA expression. The fear of that cherry blossom smell was in their bodies.
That’s what we mean when we talk about inherited trauma. It’s not a change in the actual DNA structure, but a change in how those genes get expressed, letting the progeny know what is and isn’t dangerous. It’s a survival mechanism.