who's sitting at the dinner table?

i have no idea if this is an actual therapy theory or if it’s just something my brain does, but it’s something i think about all the time.

sometimes i’m sitting at dinner with friends, family, coworkers, or a partner, and i start imagining everyone’s ancestors sitting at the table too. not in a spooky ghost way (kinda though honestly, idk), but in a family systems kind of way. i start thinking about the people who came before us, the lives they lived, the opportunities they had, the opportunities they didn’t have, and how all of those experiences ripple forward into the present day.

this thought experiment has always felt important to me because there are certain realities that become difficult to ignore once you start looking at people through a historical lens. phrases like “i don’t see color” have never really worked for me because our identities don’t exist in a vacuum. neither do our families. we all arrive in the world carrying histories that began long before we were born, and those histories continue to shape our experiences whether we acknowledge them or not.

for example, imagine two people meet, fall in loooove, and bring their families together for dinner. now imagine both sets of grandparents sitting at the table. depending on those families, the differences in lived experience can be staggering.

one grandparent may have grown up with access to good schools, stable housing, and pathways into higher education. another may have attended a segregated school, been denied opportunities because of their race, or grown up under laws that explicitly treated them as less worthy than their neighbours. one family may have spent generations building wealth through home ownership and professional careers. another may have spent generations fighting for access to those same opportunities. and what strikes me is how recent much of this history actually is.

when people talk about segregation, many imagine something distant and disconnected from the present. but public school segregation in the united states wasn’t declared unconstitutional until 1954 with brown v. board of education. ruby bridges became the first black child to integrate an all-white elementary school in new orleans in 1960. the civil rights act, which prohibited segregation in public accommodations like restaurants, hotels, and theatres, wasn’t passed until 1964. so, that wasn’t hundreds of years ago… it was quite literally like a few years ago.

there are people alive today who remember “whites only” signs. there are people alive today who remember separate washrooms, separate drinking fountains, separate schools, and the daily reality of navigating a society that was legally structured around racial hierarchy. not because they learned about it in a history book, but because they lived it.

i think that’s why conversations about privilege, race, politics, and inequality sometimes feel disconnected. we often talk about these things as abstract concepts rather than family histories. but history didn’t happen to strangers. it happened to somebody’s grandparents. somebody’s parents. somebody’s family.

if one person’s grandfather was encouraged to pursue medicine while another person’s grandfather was denied educational opportunities because of racism, those experiences don’t simply disappear when laws change. the effects continue to move through generations. opportunities accumulate. so do barriers.

that’s not about blame. it’s not about guilt. it’s not even about politics, at least not in the way people usually mean when they say politics. it’s about context.

the more i imagine everyone’s ancestors sitting at the table, the harder it becomes to view people as isolated individuals. i start seeing family stories, cultural histories, inherited beliefs, survival strategies, and generational patterns. i start seeing the larger systems that shaped people’s lives before they ever walked into the room.

as a therapist, i find that incredibly important because family systems theory teaches us that we inherit much more than genetics. we inherit stories. we inherit fears. we inherit expectations, coping strategies, values, and sometimes wounds that were never fully healed.

history lives in families. it lives in dinner conversations, family photographs, inherited opportunities, and inherited struggles. it lives in the things we talk about openly and the things nobody talks about at all.

maybe that’s why i keep imagining everyone’s ancestors sitting at the table. not because i think the past determines the future, but because understanding where people come from often helps me understand who they are today. i do think the world could use a little more of that and it’s something i try to practice actively in my own life and in therapy (with myself & with clients).

ok, thanks for reading/listening again.
bye!

References & Sources:

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483 (1954).https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/347/483/

Bridges, R. (1999). Through my eyes. Scholastic.

Civil Rights Act of 1964, Pub. L. No. 88-352, 78 Stat. 241.https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/civil-rights-act

Bowen, M. (1978). Family therapy in clinical practice. Jason Aronson.

Crenshaw, K. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A Black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1989(1), 139–167.

Davis, A. Y. (1981). Women, race & class. Random House.

National Park Service. (n.d.). Ruby Bridges and school desegregation. U.S. Department of the Interior. https://www.nps.gov

Williams, J. A. (2021). Eyes on the prize: America’s civil rights years, 1954–1965. Penguin Random House.