Intergenerational Trauma Relayed Across the Pond

Intergenerational Trauma Relayed Across the Pond

Blog for Fife ACEs Hub

My Gran’s father died when she was 5. He wouldn’t have been home much anyway since he was the captain of a merchant ship. But the loss of her father initiated the downward spiral of her life as she would have known it.

Her mother remarried, an Irish Catholic. Naturally her Grandfather disapproved and took the 2 young children – my Gran and her younger sister – to live with him and his maiden sisters on the Isle of Skye.

I’m sure my Gran had no idea what was happening in and to her world. She discovered at 18 that although her mother had tried to keep in contact, her Grandfather had intercepted the letters. So my Gran grew up thinking her Mother had abandoned her.

Gran left Scotland when she was 18 after she discovered the betrayal by all the adults in her life. She never returned.

She met my Grandpa in Montreal in the early 1920’s. He had come to Canada after WWI, leaving Glasgow behind. His father had abandoned the family there years before through a ruse of going to America to make a new life saying, “I’ll send for you” which he never did.

Gran and Grandpa had a great relationship. I used to watch them when I was growing up. They smoked like chimneys and it was always exciting to see if the ashes growing and bending at the end of the cigarette Gran had hanging out of her mouth would fall onto the pastry she was kneading on the counter.

I never heard them raise their voices. They always seemed to be in rhythm. They flowed through life together smoothly, coming together and moving apart gracefully with seemingly little need to even communicate. At least that’s what I observed until I was 12 and Grandpa died.

But my take on them is different from the stories I heard from others. And it had to be different for my Mom growing up, because she caused major issues for me.

I was child number 5 for my parents. The mistake. The pregnancy that should never have happened. The pregnancy that was proof that my parents lacked self-control and were irresponsible. At least those are the messages I perceived during my development and heard as an adult from siblings telling me what my grandparents were really like.

They had resented my Dad – a grade 10 educated farm boy. But they never accepted accountability for threatening to disown my mother if she married the Jewish doctor she met in medical school. She gave up those dreams, married the boy next door instead, and never achieved “good enough status” with her parents.

9 months after my arrival, Mother undertook teacher’s college. She passed me off to my aunt to care for. That was in fact the best thing for me because she became my one supportive relationship throughout my life.

But my Mom leaving her kids after my arrival made me the cause of the loss of their mother to my siblings. So even though I was a cute baby and my older sisters took the lead in looking after me at home, resentment, jealousy, competition for resources - were in the air I breathed.   

I wandered through my early years mostly detached. I wanted to be close to my Dad but all the adults putting him down threatened my security if I attached to him. Although my aunt was a key figure and she made me feel loved and important – she gave me responsibilities and included me in the daily tasks of the family – I couldn’t really let on I loved her either because my Mother put her down too. She was a nobody like my Dad – farm girl married to my Mom’s favourite brother.

My Mother didn’t want me but she didn’t want me to have anyone else either. She punished me for existing. I figured out a way to survive and somewhat thrive in spite of the barriers built up to hem me in. My aunt and her family became my refuge, even though all the adults said she was just using me to look after her kids. And I spent a lot of time with my best friend at her house.

I knew I didn’t have the best childhood possible, but I didn’t realize it was that bad until after my life crashed down around me at age 42. When I realized I had built my adult life on lies, I had to go back to ground zero and figure out why and get to the core so I could build the rest of my life on a foundation of truth.   

I’ve been on that journey for 18 years and finding out about ACEs in 2014 was the last clarifying piece to my puzzle.

Connecting with ACEs champions in Scotland has brought my journey full circle.

My ACEs didn’t start with my Mom or my Grandparents. They started before then – my Gran was raised by people 2 generations older than her. My great great grandfather learned to be harsh and judgmental and prejudiced long before he banished his daughter from his life and absconded with her children. Sure he must have still been dealing with grief over the loss of his own wife at a young age, but still, that didn’t justify betraying his own daughter and granddaughters.

Collectively humans have a history of being cruel to each other, and when we’re cruel in the environment where our children reside, they internalize it, and either feel it or adopt it for themselves.

I’m thankful I had my aunt who taught me kindness and compassion and how to actually love and nurture children. I was fortunate because I experienced two alternate realities while I was growing up. In my birth family I was invisible. In my aunt’s family I was integral. My younger cousins have always considered me their older sister. My own siblings have never understood my position in my aunt’s family. They also don’t understand my experience of my birth family. I’m working on not letting that bother me anymore.

I don’t care to imagine how I would have turned out if I had only had my birth family’s input during my development.  My aunt mitigated the effects of my ACEs but she couldn’t possibly prevent them, because although we loved each other we weren’t permitted to thoroughly attach. She was a buffer, not a savior.

I think that is a very key point in the Resiliency field that professionals don’t talk about. The extent of the relationship influences the level of protective factor. We can’t settle on the panacea of just one supportive adult. We have to address the level of attachment and the nature of the communication between that adult and child.

It was only when my aunt was in her 80s that she told me she knew I had it tough and she should have adopted me. I wonder how things might have been different if she had validated my feelings of isolation when I was a child. Even if I couldn’t have told anyone else, I may have been able to be more present if I could have at least shared my secret with someone.

One of the most shocking realizations I have had in the last few years is that I have no memories of food or meals in my childhood home. I don’t know where the food is kept. I can imagine the kitchen and the rooms in the house but there are no other people there. I don’t know how the 7 of us sat around the table. I don’t know where the Cornflakes are. I wasn’t consciously present with my birth family for the first 11 years of my life.

But I can smell the coffee and hear the toaster rise and taste the maple syrup on my pancakes, and feel the weight of the quilt keeping me warm in the spare room bed in my aunt’s house. I can feel the warmth of the sun on my skin as my cousins and I play in the fields while the sound of my uncle’s tractor assures me there’s an adult nearby if I need one.     

My Gran told stories of the sheep on the Isle of Skye. My Mom told stories of catching crayfish and tadpoles in the stream beside their summer home in The Laurentians in Quebec. I have few memories of growing up in my village, but memories on the farm are numerous.

Where were the adults in these young girls’ lives? All of us Elizabeth by the way – 3 generations of intelligent, powerful, tenacious women that due to prejudice and circumstance were impeded  from reaching their optimal potential.

I like the image that’s made its way around social media showing the egg of the grandchild inside the grandmother. Our ancestors carried us and we carry them.

I find it serendipitous that I have spent my life advocating for respectful, loving, nurturing treatment of children, and as I find myself finally being able to speak my truth, I’ve found kindred spirits in the homeland of my ancestors.   

I can only conclude that it’s evolution. We’ve done the best we could, even though it wasn’t the best. But as Suzanne Zeedyk tweeted recently, if we, as a society, as a culture, (and as the human species) don’t take this opportunity now to transform our relationship with our children, we will not get another chance in our lifetime.

We have the opportunity now to learn from the past and actually make a better future for the children who exist now and for those yet to come. I truly believe preventing ACEs for the new generations and helping affected adults recover is our best chance.

Elizabeth Perry

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

March 29, 2019

Asda Price of Justice

'Here feel' he said as he grabbed my hand and held it against his chest.

I cottoned on quick and went with it-'yeah swinging brick right enough!'

Not behaviour you'd expect from the Asda collections guy maybe, but this wasn't the first time we met.

'Ah what's the topic today' he says loudly, smiling broadly as he opened the gate and wheeled out the shopping.

We are on opposite sides of the fence in more ways than one.  

Every Tuesday morning I fill up my car boot with supplies for the schools nurture room, so naturally we get to talking about crime and punishment, restorative justice, compassion and child rearing.  You know the usual, just passing the time of day stuff.

And each Tuesday we pick up where we left off with our good humoured friendly debate.

'You're religious aint ya?'

'I used to be'

'Knew it' he said.  You lily liberals are all the same-soft and deluded.

‘You need to update your views my friend’ I poke back when he tells me about his army days and that what we need more of is tough love and discipline.

‘So what if someone murdered one of yours?  Would you still be shouting for compassion then?’ he offers triumphantly pleased to have the killer argument.

I think he took my moment of silence as victory. 

I hesitated and conceded that I wouldn’t.   I’d want justice and captivity both to punish and ensure the safety of others.  

Could he therefore rightly infer that all of my arguments about nurture and compassion to guide and mentor children and young people were now null and void?  Should we actually just raise the bar, call for more discipline and zero tolerance?  Was that the way forward to ensure a happier and healthier society?  Justice or mercy?  Were they mutually exclusive?  Or more of a continuum, if so where is the sweet spot?

With my Asda friends question in mind that same evening I attended an event at the Howden Theatre organised by Iain Smith from Keegan Smith 'Presiding with Kindness'.  The venue was filled to capacity.

Iain had invited two American judges who shared their compassionate approach to the law and what they had done in their court rooms to achieve it.  A number of others joined them to offer presentations and the evening ended with an audience and panel Q&A. 

Niven Rennie the director of the acclaimed VRU opened the night.  He was quick to acknowledge he was standing on the shoulders of giants and confirmed his commitment to follow in their footsteps.

Judge Victoria Pratt and Judge Ginger Lerner-Wren spoke about respect, dignity and transformation of systems and people.    Connecting their own experiences in life which fuelled their determination to do right by those they presided over.  They spoke of empathy and second chances, mental health courts and procedural justice.  The difference they had been able to affect within their sphere of influence. Illustrated by stories of anonymised defendants whose first encounter with love was standing before a judge.

They were joined by a care experienced solicitor Julie Torley, a closer to home example of how right things can go and the impact one key adult can have.  Julie shared how she had bucked the ambitions others had made for her, and burst through seemingly impenetrable barricades to fulfil the one she had made for herself .  She quoted ‘To kill a Mocking Bird’ the source of her inspiration to become a solicitor  at a time when her teachers and care givers were encouraging her into hairdressing.  We wept with her as she described the teacher who believed in her, ignoring her profanities and continued to ask sincerely ‘how are you?’

We learned about the work of Aide n Abet when Kevin Neary took to the stage and shared how he and his colleagues use their lived experience of prison to offer support, help and friendship to others following their release from jail.  We were captivated by his rejig of the ‘Good Samaritan’.  In his version it was an Aide n Abet worker who responded to the cries for help and didn't pass by.  Unlike the minister and doctor the worker climbed down into the hole next to the person in need.  Getting alongside them, meeting them where they were and although the story didn't end this way  presumably then climbing out of the hole together.  

In an evening where I'd have travelled in the rain and missed my tea for any one of the speakers and felt it was worth it, for me the highlight of the evening was the story shared by Jo Berry.  

You might have heard of her.  I hadn’t.  Her story hit me like a tidal wave.  I nearly dropped my phone while taking her picture as she arrived at the pulpit.  Her opening lines were about how her father had been killed in an IRA bombing when she was a child.

She went on to describe her meeting with the man who had planted the bomb.  They met many years later and after he had paid his court appointed dues.  Her delivery was gentle and understated and interspersed with commonplace references to everyday life-soup making, children and cups of tea.  Which seemed incongruent, yet also so fitting.  A reminder that she was indeed both extraordinary and ordinary, and that maybe, just maybe what she had been able to do was also in all of us. 

How could she have met and spoken for three hours to the man responsible for her father’s death, and astonishingly been able to find connection, commonality and peace?

She took my breath away with the depth of her character and matter of fact delivery. 

To the question ‘So what if someone murdered one of yours?  Would you still be shouting for compassion then?’  Not just Jo, but the whole evening was an answer. 

And not a polarising answer.  An either/or; left wing/right wing; black/white bash you over the head answer.

More a starter.  

A hopeful nudge toward finding the best within ourselves and each other.  Having the courage to tell a hopeful story when those being told are saturated in negativity.   An invitation to believe that rehabilitation comes from something within and that the spark to ignite it is love. 

Not forgetting that sometimes love means boundaries, self-protection, facing consequences and takes time but still a reminder that we shouldn’t let a problem to be solved get in the way of a person to be loved.

I didn’t get a sense of who was in the crowd, but I hope there were many who shared my Asda friends views. The evening had such a heuristic quality I think you couldn’t have failed to be moved toward a more hopeful and compassionate approach and been left with the feeling that it just might work. 

I think I know what I will be talking about with my new friend next Tuesday morning. 

 by Lynne Anderson 

‘My Way of Coping was to Pretend That it Wasn’t Happening’

Welcome to the Fife ACEs Hub second blog post.

Our blog will be another tool to start conversations about Adverse Childhood Experiences.  

All perspectives welcome.  

If you would like us to publish your post please email us at fifeaceshub@gmail.com

Let's start conversations that lead to the "invention of wise actions" in order to make some change!

Our second post is another anonymous submission....  

‘My Way of Coping was to Pretend That it Wasn’t Happening’ 

I had a reasonably happy early childhood but when I was a teenager, my father lost his job, we became homeless and his drinking got out of control.  In the space of a few years home became a deeply unhappy place for all of us.  

My father became violent and he systematically tried to destroy the people in our family, he was also physically abusive towards my mother and myself. 

My way of coping was to pretend that it wasn’t happening; I’d get up and go to school every day despite only getting a few hours of sleep as my father stayed up all night drinking and doing all he could to upset the rest of us. I didn’t tell anyone how awful life had become but a few close friends knew that there was something wrong.  I often slept on friend’s bedroom floors to get away.  

I really don’t know how I got through that, passing 4 Highers and getting a place at university, I guess I just hid away in studying as a means of escape, although I was always aware of education being my only hope of a “way out”. I left home as soon as I finished school and moved in with my boyfriend. While I managed to keep up the façade and go to Uni every day, the layers started to fall away, and I struggled.  

I was hugely into the dance music scene and loved going out to see DJ’s and dancing with friends, but I started to suffer from anxiety attacks which got so bad I couldn’t go out for the best part of 3 years.  I was young and should have been enjoying life, but I wasn’t.  

By some stroke of fate / luck or whatever, my boyfriend (now husband) was surprisingly left money in a will so we decided to use the money to go away travelling. 

I felt like it was finally a chance for me to completely escape. But I remember crying the day we left because here I was, unable to go out with my friends yet was now about to get on a plane to live in another country for a year.  I was terrified.  

That year away completely transformed things for me; I did voluntary work which was very rewarding and boosted my confidence.  

I also attended a yoga course in a nearby ashram with a teacher who could see my anxiety from the very first class, he just knew something was wrong but thankfully he never asked for the story. Through those classes I learned how to look after myself, to recognise the feelings of anxiety and more importantly how to manage them.  I didn’t notice at the time, but the anxiety attacks started to reduce and eventually I was able to control them completely.  

Finally, I was able to start moving forward. Now I am through the other side my life is good and is calm and has been for several years. Now I am working hard to bring up children of my own, ensuring they are happy despite happiness being absent from my own childhood.  

It’s a tough gig being a parent, but I think even more so when you are so aware of what it’s like to suffer trauma.  There are a number of key challenges I am trying to overcome:

Reality v Expectation

When I knew I was going to have my first baby I was delighted.  I had always wanted to create the happy family that I had craved when I was a kid.  So, all I had to do was learn from my own parents and I decided to just “be completely different from them” and that would be easy wouldn’t it?  Very quickly that philosophy tripped me up – I made a LOT of mistakes while adjusting to life with a Colicky new born; I beat myself up about that chronically and really struggled to keep myself going as I failed to meet my own (unrealistic) expectations.  My son needed me 24 hours a day and I found that incredibly difficult to manage, I was breast feeding and he was pretty much attached to me day and night.  I felt I had to give him my whole self all the time as not doing so felt like I was failing him.  Thankfully my husband is brilliant, and he convinced me that it was Ok to take a break, he tried hard to sort everything, so I could have some time out to have a bath or get out the house. The more I did it, the more I realised how important it was to take time for myself and that it wasn’t a bad thing for the baby either.

Saying the “right” things

As a parent I am always very conscious of my interactions with my children – I know it’s important to try to say the right things and to give them the safe and nurturing home.  I give them all the cuddles they need, help with homework, I’m there to see their gymnastics show and talk with them over dinner every night. There are times though, when I absolutely don’t say the right thing and as soon as I’ve said it I immediately regret it and there’s a real ache in my heart as I stew it over, concerned that I have caused them sadness. It’s so hard to get the balance right, again a reality check is hard to do when my own experiences are so skewed.

Not Making Comparisons

I spent so much time crying as a kid, living in absolute fear that my father would come home drunk and angry and we lived on a knife edge for a long time.  The terrors we were subjected to were emotionally draining and I remember being utterly exhausted by the actual act of crying. I find it very hard to see my own children get upset over small things, when compared to what I experienced, they have nothing to cry about, surely?  I always feel very guilty about that and I am consciously trying hard to acknowledge their ups and downs without being dismissive.  I have realised that they can be upset or sad for their own reasons and that sometimes that might be because I gave them a blue cup instead of red...

Dealing with Difficult Questions

I decided a long time ago that I could no longer be in touch with my Dad (and later my Mum) after many years of trying to reconcile.  As everyone knows, children like to ask difficult questions and I have tried to be open when they ask about my parents. But it’s very hard (and painful) for me to even answer a simple question like “what’s your Dad’s name, Mummy” but I try to answer what I can, and they seem to accept things as I tell them.  I guess that may change as they get older and I must prepare for that. Children need to know where they come from and while I don’t feel like my parents are people who should be in my children’s lives, I know the kids need to have these questions answered to make sense of who they are.

Mistakes are OK

As the years go on I am trying to get my head around the fact that I can’t be the perfect mother who never gets it wrong, and that when I do make mistakes, I’m not going to cause my children to suffer a lifetime of trauma (if only we could see into the future!) This is a huge task and I am not completely there with that yet, not sure if I ever will be. I have to say that having a good friendship network of other mums has been helpful; they don’t need to know my personal story but sharing the good and bad with them has helped me understand what “normal” family life is like.  My hope for my children is that they can be free to enjoy their childhood with a sense of security and love and that their overriding memories are happy ones.