Encanto turned out to be a deeply psychological cartoon, which made me think of the generational trauma many women have, who experienced hardship in life, and are passing on into new generations. It is a beautiful and musical cartoon with many psychological messages. It shows how the trauma of war affects several generations. And how the Madrigal family was able to heal their family by rebuilding the family’s foundation. It was challenging and required an open heart, open mind, courage and love, the gifts that Mirable had. It also beautifully illustrates the internal conflicts each family member is dealing with because of their desire to belong and their fear of being rejected from the family system.

Understandably to survive physically we develop qualities that increase our chances of survival. Some of those qualities are resilience, flexibility and optimism. Some are control, blindness and deafness to feelings of others as well as our own, sharpness, tightness, tunnel vision and tendency to jump to conclusions.

Alma Madrigal, the matriarch of the Madrigal family reminded me of many women I experienced growing up in Ukraine where many great grandmothers and grandmothers survived WWII. It also made me think of war in Ukraine right now and all the wars around the world that will have the same effect on women and their families generations to come.

Survival qualities will prevail and limit development of qualities that help people survive and thrive in peaceful times. Such qualities as savoring life, taking the time to smell roses, self-actualization and all other luxuries of peaceful life. Do you remember Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Physiological and safety needs are at the foundation. The issue is that to feel safe and survive physically we need other people, we need to feel accepted in our tribe, in our family, in our community. Often this need to feel safe and fear of being rejected leads to rejection of self that later brings psychological and psychosomatic illnesses.

And it is not just a war that keeps us stuck in a survival mode. It can be other life’s hardships such as losses of loved ones, divorce, job loss, losses of livelihoods or any major life’s misfortunes. Such experiences are painful and require energy to process them, and when we are surviving physically we don’t have that energy and inner resources. We generally, unconsciously, choose to freeze, displace or suppress difficult feelings.

Unfortunately freezing painful feelings freeze other feelings too. Such feelings as tenderness and love are frozen or ousted just like feelings of fear, anger, sadness or hurt. It is impossible to suppress one feeling without suppressing others. This in turn leads to coldness and detachment, to closed hearts and narrow minds, to an overly controlling environment, where people are suffocating because they cannot be free out of fear of losing something or of being rejected.

For example, Pepa is stuck in her overwhelming feelings, she is unable to process them because family is pretending not to see her struggles, they do not accept her with all her feelings. Julieta, Mirabel’s mom, is tender and loving, but she is trying to avoid conflicts and doesn’t challenge destructive status quo dynamics of the family, but adequately addressing conflicts helps us set boundaries, bring growth and maturity. Bruno is expelled from the family because it is forbidden to tell the truth in the family, but healing is impossible without truth. Luisa is suppressing her vulnerability, her tiredness, her sensibility by being an all mighty savior and helper. She works hard to receive love from her family, but she is not seen for who she is and she feels hurt. Isabella is unable to be free, she is stuck playing an idealized role, meeting grandmother’s expectations. Meeting those idealized expectations is a heavy burden that keeps her constrained. Camilo is constantly adapting to fit expectations of others and as a result is unable to understand who he is himself.

Alma’s blindness and deafness to feelings of her family members, her expectations of them stifle them and they in turn become imprisoned by their family roles. Alma unwillingly broadcasts to the family that each of them is valuable to the family based on their contribution, not on their own. They have to serve the function their family has assigned to them. In peaceful times these roles and functions are limiting and don’t allow them to be who they really are. Love in her family is conditional, and is given as a payment for the service each member provides.

Mirable, the main character doesn’t have any tangible special gifts. She is suffering because she feels she cannot serve the family. To her this means she is not valuable to the family, she is useless. Nothing she does is good enough for her grandmother and she feels that she will never be able to gain her approval. Later she learns what her gift is and it is the ability to heal the whole family system, to challenge the status quo, to uncover the truth, to kindly and understandingly connect with each family member, to free family members of their overwhelming roles and expectations, and to rebuild the family system foundation.

At the end, Alma, grandmother reconciles with her granddaughter Mirable, who brought truth to the surface. Mirable in turn is able to understand her grandmother’s struggles she had to endure as a young mother. She says: “We were given a miracle because of you. We are a family because of you. And nothing could ever be broken that we can’t fix… together.”

“Look at this home, we need a new foundation
It may seem hopeless, but we’ll get by just fine
Look at this family, a glowing constellation
So full of stars, everybody wants to shine
But the stars don’t shine, they burn
And the constellations shift
I think it’s time you learn
You’re more than just your gift”

Encanto helps us understand our inherent worth and that our miracles are not magic, the miracle is inside each of us. And that there is a difference between motivation with which we adjust to societal norms. Our motivation can be healthy or unhealthy. Does your motivation to do things come out of a desire to shine and to express our full potential? Or does it come out of fear of being rejected or losing love? We can serve others because that brings us fulfillment or we can serve others because we want to please others. If we do the first we live our own life, if we do the second we feel burned out and are living the life of someone whose expectations we are trying to meet.