It’s time for me to speak out and share a personal story about how childhood trauma has negatively impacted my life. I share this because of the unconscionable situation we have at the border with families being forcibly separated. Nursing babies being ripped from their mother’s arms. Mothers and fathers being told that their children are going for showers (reminiscent of Nazi Germany?) and never return.
The effects of this trauma on these families and all of us who are watching – all of us who have compassion and can empathize that is – is immense and life-long.
The childhood trauma I endured as a child living with an unpredictable, raging, abusive, alcoholic mother, is my “why” for studying psychology, shamanism, and energy healing, and why I assist clients who have experienced unspeakable trauma on their healing journey. Let me share a personal story with you.
It was summer and I was just 3 ½ about to turn 4 in September when my mother gave me away to someone I had never met. The woman was a stranger to me, but apparently someone my mother casually knew.
Wilhelmina, the woman I was left with, was an older lady with a pale complexion and pure white hair. She owned a small farm. I didn’t know it then, but as an adult surmise that her farm was less than 15 miles from my home. Her dapple grey horse stood in the small corral, chickens walked about the yard eating worms and bugs. Her fluffy black, white and tan farm dog and outdoor cats roamed freely. She was a kind lady who made sure I was fed and properly cared for. I don’t know if my mother paid her to keep me. I remember my mother coming to visit on Fridays and Wilhelmina making macaroni and cheese for lunch.
“Mommy, please take me home today,” I asked my mother during one of her visits.
She looked at Wilhelmina and told me to go outside to play with the kids from upstairs while she and Wilhelmina chatted. The front of her dilapidated farmhouse had a long porch with four pillars. A young family lived upstairs with their three small children who were just slightly older than me. During the day the kids and I played cards, jacks or made corn cob dolls on the front porch.
Week after week my mother came to visit for a couple of hours and then left without me.
I would ask Wilhelmina, “When am I going home?”
“I don’t know honey. Eat your lunch now.”
“Does my daddy know where I am, will he come and get me?”
“Eat your lunch sweetie.”
I don’t know if she knew the answer or just wasn’t telling me the truth.
Even though the time I stayed with her wasn’t abusive – after all, I was safe, I had food to eat and played with the kids upstairs. I suffer to this day with deep emotional wounds resulting in negative core beliefs of feeling unwanted, unloved, unprotected, etc.; moreover, my biology was negatively impacted with physical illnesses and autoimmune diseases that showed up later in life.
I highly recommend the book Childhood Disrupted by Donna Jackson Nakazawa that discusses the ACE’s or Adverse Childhood Experiences study https://donnajacksonnakazawa.com/childhood-disrupted/
I also implore you to reach out to your Representatives, call, write, sign petitions, donate, do whatever you can to help these children. Link to find your representative: https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
I leave you with this:
Quotation from Martin Niemöller on display in the Permanent Exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Niemöller was a Lutheran minister and early Nazi supporter who was later imprisoned for opposing Hitler’s regime.
— US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) was a prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last seven years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.
Niemöller is perhaps best remembered for the quotation:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
Victorea. I have known this story from you. It still makes me cry for little you. You heart and healing work and fight for the underdig are just a few of the things I love about you. We cannot stand silent.
Carol, You are right. We must speak up and stand up to help our brothers and sisters. We are One. What happens to the lest of us, happens to all of us.