You Can Only Give Away What You Have
Recognizing Trauma and the Healing Journey
Growing up, I had everything and I had nothing. I grew up traumatized. I was raised in Harlem, the sole daughter of a West Indian mother who doted on me. I know beyond a doubt that my mother loved me deeply. I was fed regularly and well. I had piano and voice lessons. I was a Girl Scout and went to Vermont during the summers to live on a farm. I went to Catholic school and received a first-class education. I had everything and I had nothing because my mother had nothing left to give.
My mother loved me, but she was scared, disappointed and traumatized herself. Estline came to the United States as a young woman and soon experienced the harshness of immigrant life. She was different from her sisters; she liked fabrics, style, food and learning. She was sensitive. What she got was work as a housemaid in a home where she was expected to share her bed with the husband of her employer. She quit because she just wasn’t that way. She was a handsome woman who attracted men. Her brother-in-law reached for her one day. She told her sister and was given 24 hours to leave the house. She learned not to trust but continued to love her family because that was all she had. Somehow, she found work in a dress factory as a piece worker where she remained all her working life until she retired.
She met my father when she was in her 30’s and I was born when she was 35. And I was all she had because she found out that my dad was married with three children and a wife in Barbados. I remember her saying to me, “You wait and you wait for the best opportunity. And then you realize that you have nothing.” My mother was in her 80s when she said those words to me. Hers had been a life of working and wanting more for her life, but having no pathway or guide.
She loved me too much. She was possessive, overprotective and believed strongly in corporal punishment accompanied by severe emotional stress. By emotional stress, I mean that I would be told in the morning that I had a beating coming sometime in the day. I lived with fear that had no name but the feeling lived in my body and consciousness. My fight or flight instinct was always activated and I actually ran away a few times, only to have to return home to my punishment. This instinct to flee and hide lasted well into my life until I understood that I could provide emotional safety for myself. My mother loved me and was afraid to lose me, not knowing that her actions drove me away. I did not trust her because she wanted my soul; she did not trust me because I could not give her the part of me that needed to live. But we loved each other because we were family.
Because of her possessiveness, I had no friends. I was an only child. I walked to school by myself. I walked home alone and was a latchkey kid until 6:00 pm when my mom came home from work. I literally had to fight to have a friend when I was 16. I had everything and I had nothing. I hid my pocketbook under my pillow to preserve some modicum of privacy. It would be years before I was able to sleep without a blanket for comfort. Even in the warm weather.
Unbeknownst to me, I grew up damaged. I had everything and did not know that I had nothing. I went to Bronx Science and the University of Rochester. I worked in finance and worked for tax attorneys and tax accountants, and was always afraid of really moving forward. I hid the fear even from myself.
Gratefully, in my 30’s I had a holistic therapist who treated me for PTSD and I still did not know that I was traumatized. I made progress in my journey to self-awareness and self-worth, but still had no idea that PTSD is a result of trauma. I simply was not ready for that level of awareness. I was not ready to look at my mother’s legacy to me.
I was still afraid of everything and nothing. I lived afraid. All the time. I was afraid of failing, succeeding, the dark, the unexpected, the unknown and the known. Fear lived in my mind and body.
It’s been in the past five years or so when I began to read about trauma and its effects on the emotional and physical body and I recognized myself and began to heal. As I began to read about how trauma changes the brain, I began to understand some of my behaviors. We can only heal what we can feel.
When I was offered the opportunity to work with Home for Good to identify, and transform the processes in the foster care system that generate trauma, I was transfixed and in love, literally. While the experiences of the parents and children enmeshed in the foster care system do not exactly mimic my childhood, the results are the same, emotionally. These parents and children are traumatized and, in many cases, they have literally no opportunity to recognize and heal. They are struggling to manage the grief, anger, feeling of powerlessness and sense of dislocation that comes from being separated from their children. Whether by intent or design, the foster care system processes are designed to label and punish the participants.
Traumatized people traumatize. Yes, we continue to inflict pain until we consciously decide to learn to love ourselves. I inflicted pain by becoming emotionally unavailable to people. I would literally disappear for periods of time. No returned phone calls or answered messages. I would literally stop speaking to people for the least offense. I hardly recognize that other person jthat I was, but she was me and she lived, somehow.
Self-love can only develop in a container of non-judgement where we can begin to accept ourselves and the consequences of all our decisions and experiences.
Home for Good is comprised of folks who have been traumatized, have worked with the traumatized and want to stop the madness. I’m all in because when one of us heals, we can help someone else to heal.
I started this piece thinking I would be talking about myself and realized that I had to talk about Estline because our trauma is shared.
I have learned that you can only give away what you have.
