Eggshells, Generational Trauma, and the Light I See Now.

By: JANA GREENE

When I met my husband 18 years ago, I had to explain why my family of origin are not part of my life. “What do you mean, you don’t really have family?” he may have wanted to ask. Estrangement due to differences? You don’t get along with others? Witness Protection Program?” No. Just dysfunction that I had to let go of in order to protect my sobriety. My getting sober in 2001 was kind of the death knell on family relations: I simply became less easy to manipulate, and my tolerance for the bullshittery of dysfunction tanked. It was like blinders came off and I decided the cycle breaks here. For my daughters, if not for me. When a child grows up in a volatile, unpredictably violent home, she learns. She learns to make herself as small as possible, to expect an outburst or violence out of the clear blue, and to monitor the moods of an abuser in order to stay “safe.” These “skills” never completely leave her. The nervous system reacts before the brain or the rest of the body, which seems to forever be in fight, flight, or fawn. Add a layer of s*xual abuse to a child, and expect her to grow up unaffected by this trauma? Was that the expectation for her? The whole plan was just “don’t tell anybody,” and she was supposed to just go on her merry way? She remains attuned to eggshells under her feet to this day, but has also become hyper-attuned to any shift in anyone’s energies – forever and ever, amen. The slightest variations in tone of voice or movement, an affront to her lizard brain, that’s just trying to keep her safe. How to tame that ancient lizard? I’m not 100% sure. It’s a squeaky little bastard. How is she to un-become hyper-attuned to energies foreign (outside of herself) and domestic (in her own body?) I did not acquire the nerve to confront this facet of my healing until I got into therapy, about seven years ago. I learned that the body keeps score and the mind likes to cling on to the ways it knows. How are we ever to be able to function like normal people in society, kind and productive people?
If not for therapy, spiritual practices, a loving and safe home life now, an incredible family, a network of friends, I would be a mental illness goner. What they don’t know is that it takes audacity to confront your upbringing. Had I not deviated from the family “norm,” I would no doubt still be a practicing alcoholic, or dead. Certainly, I would have lost my own children or followed in the long chain of my tragic ancestry. That would be the easier thing to do. Easier than dealing with the emotional reflux that rises on occasion from the pain I’ve tried to stuff down my gullet and keep there. But the extreme dysfunction I was born into has come undone, been lit on fire, the ashes blown away by my own breath. There is no joy in dismantling the trauma and losing people as a result. The sad truth is that it’s the family curse – each person who is supposed to provide care has had none themselves, no blueprint to do it differently. They didn’t know how to protect you, so they threw you to the wolves. The wolves, they knew by name; they never went hungry for long. I was told, “well, no family is perfect” – the most invalidating thing a person can say. It rings hollow where “I’m sorry” could have been a steppingstone to reconciliation. But it is not reconciliation I long for anymore. Most family has been out of my life for the entire 18 years, which is God’s providence. I suspect they worry about how much I’ll share (what would the neighbors think!? The same neighbors who heard the screaming through paper thin walls? I think they had a clue.) Or the knowing other family members who knew but did nothing; sometimes because their homes were even more toxic. They needn’t worry. I keep those details for my private journal, stained with tears and written in a quest for my own sense of justice. Some things I will never write about for public consumption. But the damage done? I’m not going to ghost my own soul because feelings might be hurt. Little Me deserves to be heard, and she deserves to heal, through the words that I write, and therapy. And she has, because she’s surrounded by love and light, which we all know vanquishes darkness. Eggshells are not meant to be stepped on. They are a pod to grow life, not an obstacle course to navigate, and my nervous system – the seemingly last vestige of my antique pain – will heal as well. Darkness I knew as a child. Light I know now. Yep. Light, I know now.