The undoing…
Childhood memories are the best aren’t they? Or are they? Most of my favorite memories can easily be attached to a song. When we were kids we would go visit our friends who lived a few hours away. We had to drive along Highway 41 going North to get there. Often, the Allman Brother Band’s song, “Ramblin Man”, would come on and my siblings and I would belt out the lyrics while sitting in the backseat. We would giggle when the song got to the lyrics, “I was born in the backseat of a greyhound bus rollin’ down highway 41,” and then erupt into full out laughter because we were rolling down highway 41. How often I have wished all my childhood memories were positive like this one.
Have you ever loved someone so much and despised them at the same time? I have, and the conflict it created in my mind as a child was overwhelming. On one hand, I loved my dad so much. I was such a daddy’s girl when I was little. I have many wonderful memories of things he taught me, such as the love of music, recycling, repurposing, and reusing, fishing, using tools, giving others a hand, loving animals, and loving family.
On the other hand, however, I despised him. I couldn’t wrap my little brain around why he did the things he did to us. See, ultimately what also got stored in my memory and body was the inability to sleep soundly. When my husband and I were first married he didn’t understand why I was up every time he got up. I tried to explain to him it was just the way my body was conditioned. Dad would often come home from a night of drinking with his uncles in a hostile, agitated mood. He would yell, swear and break things. Us three kids, mom, and the dog would lay in bed overloaded with panic and fear, and pretend we were sleeping in hopes that none of us would be dragged out of bed. Hoping and praying he would just eat and go to sleep. Inevitably though, someone was dragged from the safety of their bed and became the target of his verbal and sometimes physical lashing. A level of fear like that conditioned my body to literally hear my children roll over in their cribs from across the house. This fear conditioned me to never fully relax and get into a deep sleep. I literally slept with “one eye open”. My husband and I would joke that if someone broke into our home, it would be me taking them down because I’d be the first one up!
Over time, I just learned to make myself small and relatively invisible. If I just stayed quiet and I was good, he wouldn’t pull me out of bed. I wouldn’t be the target, or at least that’s what I told myself. The fear created in my childhood plagued me for most of my life. Fear was there as a familiar friend to protect me from danger. Just stay small. Just stay quiet. Just be a good girl. Don’t step into the unknown.
I didn’t understand how this fear affected so many areas of my life. Not just my life, but my children’s lives as well. When you’re a kid, the things you see, hear, and are exposed to are out of your control. What I didn’t know for most of my life was the long term, devastating effects of childhood trauma. Not just the traumatic things I had experienced, but the generational trauma that my parents had experienced, and their parents had experienced. People say kids don’t remember. Kids are resilient. The answer to both of those statements is yes and no. Kids don’t always consciously remember. Kids are resilient. The catch to both of these is this: These memories are stored deep in the mind and body. Trauma can literally become part of our DNA and have mental and physical manifestations in the body. The good news is there are things we can do to undo it based on current research. I am living proof that this healing is possible. I sleep at night now. There is freedom from fear if you’re willing to put the work in. It’s work I’m grateful my personal growth journey took me through, and I can take you through it too. There is hope for better tomorrows for you and your future generations.
