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
