How I overcame generations of trauma

Letter #6

Hello Tom,

I want to focus on trauma in families in my response.

For our readers who have so graciously volunteered to be a part of our family, I have to warn you that the story you’re about to read is a traumatic event I’m sharing for the purpose of growth and healing.

It was a day in the summer of 1971, I was seven years old. Our friend Ellie Petter and some other kids from the neighborhood were at the house to go swimming, I remember it was a beautiful sunny day. A day that was going to turn into one of the most horrible experiences any child can have. Somehow Ellie and I ended up in the house and we started to get a little out of hand with the horseplay. Pretty soon it turned into a playful pushing match when Ellie tripped and hit my mom’s end table that was so popular in those days. On the bottom shelf was a vase that was a family heirloom. I can still see what happened in my head after all these years. When Ellie fell, she nudged the table just enough for the vase to lose balance and it wobbled almost in slow motion until it fell over and broke. It was so odd the way it broke. When it fell over it fell softly but it was enough to break.

Knowing my mom the way I did I knew it wasn’t going to be good. I tried to laugh it off with Ellie saying “I’ll tell my mom and she’ll be Ok” but I was really scared. I went outside and apologized with a hint of playfulness that to this day I don’t really understand. She went inside and nothing happened for about 5 minutes. I convinced myself that maybe this time would be the time she wouldn’t get very angry. Then she came to the door and said kind of softly, “Billy can you come in here”.

What followed was a volcanic rage. I remember the fear was overwhelming as I realized that she was totally without any restraint. It didn’t end well is all I’ll say.

The stage had been set for a relationship with my mother from that for a long time was based on fear.

Talk about my first lesson in trauma.

It would be the first of many.

The quote from The Dark Knight in your article is so true.

“As you know, madness is like gravity, all it takes is a little push.”

There’s a lot of traumas on my mom’s side of the family. It produced anger in her and all her siblings. It truly did take a little push. In today’s world there’s no doubt that Aunt Susan and I would’ve been taken away. As would my cousins. In many ways what I experienced growing up was child’s play compared to my cousins. Looking back, I’m amazed at the resilience my sister and I had.

But my Mom had her own story of trauma. It’s truly a story I’ve never heard before. Mom was the eldest of five kids. Her grandparents got custody of her when she was two years old claiming that her mother was not fit to be a parent. Her parents then went on to have four more kids that her grandparents never contested. The story gets more and more bizarre. There were times when her mother and father would visit but they would stay in the basement with her siblings. Naturally my mother would want to be with her siblings, but her father told her if he ever caught her down there, he’d “beat her ass!”

If that wasn’t bad enough, there were times when my mom would walk with her mother and siblings on the way back to their house only to be told at the same point of the walk, “Ok Diane you have to go back now.” My mother would wail and plead with her mother to take her home with her. But to no avail. This event happened many times.

In my mother’s grandparents’ home, she had Aunt Ruth and her husband Ed that lived upstairs, and an Uncle Howard that lived in the basement. Everyone in that home were alcoholics and although my mother has never admitted it, I strongly suspect she was the victim of sexual abuse.

This obviously didn’t happen in a vacuum. All of these people were extremely dysfunctional without the slightest clue as to what makes a good family. From my investigation into our families past, it was revealed it goes way back. The bible is truly right when it says the sins of our families can affect 4 generations.

Seeing an interview with Bessel van der Kolk whom you referenced in your previous article about trauma, it’s perfectly evident to me that my mother was suffering horribly from it. Bessel said that trauma is anything outside the range of normal human experience. It’s overwhelming to the point of paralysis. That it is something you continue to relive. He used an example of being bitten by a dog when you’re a child. The more support you have and the more loving response you get determines to a large degree being successful in overcoming the trauma. The sad part is that many of us didn’t get that. He also said that it changes the circuitry in the brain. We actually make neuro-pathways that pretty much determine how we’re going to act or react based on years of living in that environment. The brain won’t turn off, it’s constantly in this fight or flight mode. Consciously or unconsciously, we’re living like you have to survive life rather than having the ability to see it realistically. Sure, life is hard, and many times it’s scary as heck, but it’s also beautiful.

There was beauty in my mom. A lot of it. My love of music came from her. The emotional part of me when it’s harnessed right comes from her. The ability to laugh and to laugh hard came from her. She’s also very giving, although sometimes I think this comes from this desperate desire to be praised. But she would help anyone and very often does! I’d have to say she had the biggest impact on teaching me good morals. Like all people she was very complicated.

But living in the environment she lived in caused a lot of problems. The inability to solve problems in a relationship had devastating consequences. That was because she has struggled her whole life with thinking like a victim. When a person accepts that view of themselves, it’s almost impossible to grow. Only people that are secure in who they are and know who they are regardless of how much they succeed or fail can truly be healthy in a relationship.

Living in that environment affected me in so many ways. One of the ways it affected me for good was to be willing to admit and see wrong in myself. I just figured out from watching my parent’s terrible arguments that no one was listening. The inability to see and admit fault was astounding to me. The crazy thing is the worst arguments we had when I was a teenager all the way into young adulthood was when I was trying to convince her that she may have shared just some of the blame for relationship issues. It really was a fool’s errand. I needed her to take responsibility. I drew water from that bitter well way to often until I finally realized it was way too scary for her to take responsibility.

We always hear if we can’t change a situation, we need to change ourselves. For 40 years this is what I’ve tried to do. Quite a few times I had to take a sabbatical from the relationship. Once for 6 years and another time for 8 years. I talked to people from her past and finally accepted that when I was a child and a teenager her issues had nothing to do with me. This is what children placed in those environments almost always think.

That was the first step of being freed. It was a watershed moment. How can we expect a person paralyzed in a wheelchair to walk?

When I began to look at it that way, it really helped me. This has been going on for generations.

Then I heard the song by Mike + The Mechanics called ‘The Living Years’ when I was in my mid 20s. The song hit me like a punch from Mike Tyson. I welled up hearing this part of the song.

So, we open up a quarrel.

Between the present and the past

We only sacrifice the future.

It’s the bitterness that lasts.

I was so tired of being bitter and angry. It destroyed a large portion of my life. It really does poison the soul. I’m not saying the separation was bad during those times I had to take a step back, I’m saying the bitterness was. I do think there are times when separation is the only alternative. Sometimes it may be for a season, sometimes it may be for much longer, but for me in my journey I finally came to accept that the rejection I felt had nothing to do with me or my value as a person. How many of us in our lives are letting the trauma have the final say by interpreting our childhoods that way?

The sad thing is that I know I did that to some degree to you too son. It was my issue not yours! I’m so sorry! As much as you try as a parent, you’re still going to fail and fail bad.

It’s like the Apostle Paul said and I’m paraphrasing this. “I want to do what’s right, but more often than not I do what’s wrong.”

We can decide to learn from the trauma. We can grow in the trauma if we allow ourselves to. Some of the greatest gains we’ll ever make is from pain. We have to get our footing on solid ground. We have to have the courage to be healed too. The crazy thing is that I realized is that I too took on the cloak of victimhood. I carried it around like a security blanket. The freedom we seek isn’t the freedom we want many times is it? We have to be strong enough to realize how weak we are, once we accept that we become strong enough to begin standing on our own confident in who we are.

Love you Son

Note to reader: This is a response to Letter #5, titled Let’s talk about trauma, Dad