Generational Trauma

 Trauma is not just something that one or two individuals experience, but something that transcends generations over the combination of years of neglect and abuse.  

I think that we; the person afflicted attempt to isolate these traumatic experiences into one episode of life, but in fact, this is not the first time that our family has expressed this trauma. 

Personally, I can perceive that my trauma directly results from the trauma that my mom faced or was impacted by because of the trauma she never dealt with. My mother says that she was a victim of abuse as early as age 5, and before she could officially reach her teenage years, she lost both of her parents. 

I can imagine that during my mom’s abuse back in the 1960s, mental health care for children was almost non-existent. Also, she was raised in a small country town where mental health counseling was not a thing to do for people of her gender and race.  

Trauma typically works on the outcomes, not the incomes of generational abuse. The neglect of not having parents is something that most don’t fully understand. My question is, “where was the therapy for grieving a lost(s)? Did my mother have therapy in school, church, or outside mental health counseling? 

My mother's abuse and trauma played and plagued her well into her adult years, and even before she was officially an adult, she gave birth to me at age 16.  

How is it possible to raise a child, when you are still learning how to adult yourself? And she didn’t officially cope with her past abuse and grieving.  

My own abuse started as a result of her abuse at an early age. Add on to the fact that my father wasn’t present in my life. The family structure was already broken, and fatherlessness was real to me at such an early age. 

Parents are products of their upbringing, and they tend to raise their children in a similar environment as to how they were raised. Sometimes, the parents do their best to move away or run away from the hurt and pain they experienced. Without properly resolving or treating their abuse, they move on into adulthood with open wounds never healed.