By Anna Von Reitz
Don't worry, there's no foul language or things that kids can't see. It's sexist as Hell. The "for instance" case is all about Grandmothers as trauma victims; it could be Grandfathers, Fathers, Mothers, or other family members just as well.
The basic concept is how we all curl up around wounded family members and cater to them and try to deal with their fears and weird behaviors and how, to the extent that they don't heal, we wind up letting them dictate behaviors and standards for the rest of us that inflict more trauma --- so the unhealed trauma of one family member carries forward like a bad gene or bad meme and impacts new generations.
It's true. It happens all the time, and we don't necessarily think about it as much as we should or concentrate on it enough to push damaged family members to heal their hurts. Our tendency is just to accept them as is, and not consider what their trauma also does to us.
Whether it is trauma caused by war, or domestic violence, or illness or religious mania or addictions or grief or all the other causes there may be, it's all trauma and it all comes home to roost, with one damaged family member having a bad impact on everyone else.
I have shared the fact that my Mother was a closet adrenaline junkie, who would work herself up into a rage or unreasonable fear to get high.
She didn't realize this about herself.
Many veterans of the Second World War did the same thing, with or without alcohol. The tendency in our family --- and I witnessed the same thing in other families of our generation --- was to look away and just accept it and try to deal with the results.
Maybe we ought to work harder and be more concerned both about the wounded family member and ourselves.
I will use myself as an example --- I was regularly beaten as a young girl for no apparent reason. My Mother, who was otherwise very intelligent and poised, would fly into a mindless rage, and I would be left to deal with the welts and bruises.
My older Sister, also.
She never let herself go when our Father was around. No doubt she knew that he would not tolerate it. Years later, I found out that our Grandmother used to beat our Mother in the same way, so this physical violence was "normalized" in her own family from the prior generation, too.
The sins of the Fathers.... unto the third and fourth generation....having accepted the idea that it was alright to beat children, it simply continued.
This little video clip is insightful about the need to heal ourselves and not just let the wounded among us lead us by the nose and perpetuate all this trauma and abuse on a multi-generational basis.
It's a call to think and really reflect on the traumatic experiences of our own lives and how we may or may not have healed.
By the time I became a Mother, I had sorted through my own trauma, realized what was wrong with my Mom, found my own answers, healed and moved on. My children never suffered physical pain at my hands, never helplessly wondered what they had done to deserve being screamed at and pummeled.
None of that.
The abuse and the insidious self-induced drug addiction underlying it ended with me; I didn't pass the trauma on, but I did have to work hard to heal myself and it was a profoundly lonely task.
I think that what this man is pointing out is really simple but profound. We don't help our wounded family members by enabling them or looking the other way or trying to tough it out, by letting them abuse us or giving into their irrational rages, fears, or need to control. We don't help them by letting them blame us, guilt us, or manipulate us.
Tough love is called for. And making better choices all the way around.
My relationship with my Father was never marred by violence, and my relationship with my Son has been similarly blessed because of the work of healing I accomplished before he was born.
My Sister never hurt her children, either, but she never healed, either.
Sometimes the best we can do is to shield someone else from the traumas we've endured ourselves --and suck it up, but the real goal is to heal, not just sadly endure.
I wish my Sister had been able to throw it over her shoulder as I did early on, but she was of a different and less hardy, less enterprising nature. She always yearned for the warm and certain comfort of a Mother who could be relied upon and suffered for the lack of that throughout her life.
When our Mother was on her deathbed, my Sister tried to make her peace with our Mother, but it was too late for both of them.
Our Mother had long ago glossed over her behavior and more than half-forgotten it. The need for adrenalin abated with age. She hadn't flown into any rages for years. For her, it was over, and she didn't understand my Sister's half-choked tears at all.
As for my Sister, it was too late, too, but in a different way. She realized that there would never be any grand shining moment of closure. There would always be the deep unanswered need of a child in her heart. She carried that to her grave.
If we all think, if we all try, it doesn't have to be that way. We can heal. We can be whole. We don't have to harm the next generation by perpetuating the same miseries, addictions, and ignorance we suffer through ourselves.
Someone asked me once -- but don't you have scars?
Sure. I've got scars. Lots of them.
I see them on my soul the same way I see them on my skin. I remember what caused those scars. Sometimes I contemplate them, but for me, it's like it happened a long time ago, to someone else, in another life, and the trauma itself is healed.
Please give a couple minutes to listen to this very short video clip and think about the issues this man is bringing forward:
----------------------------
To support this work look for the Donate button on this website.
How do we use your donations? Find out here.
