by Gwen Olsen
Ironically, as I was learning to speak Spanish, I discovered my mother’s name in its exact spelling…D-O-L-O-R-E-S…translates to pain, sorrow and grief. It was almost as if her given name had eerily foretold her future.
Please, Don’t Tell Anyone: Living with Shameful Family Secrets
My mother was an avid member of the local Women’s Democrats. We had just come from a meeting. It was late when we dropped off my Aunt Phyllis, my dad’s younger sister, at her house in Marion and headed back to Greentown. The house was unusually dark when we arrived home. I had to squint, straining my eyes to focus in the pitch-black darkness as Mom and I entered the family room from the garage. After my vision had adjusted, I could see my dad sitting at the kitchen table in his white boxer shorts and T-shirt. Illuminated by the moonlight streaming through the window, he was almost glowing in contrast. A half-empty, uncapped bottle of vodka sat on the table in front of him. My body stiffened in anticipation as I realized he had been drinking. It was one thing if Dad had a beer or two, but hard liquor always meant trouble!
“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded, slurring his speech.
“You’re drunk, Arthur J,” Mom retorted in disgust as she stubbornly and defiantly brushed past him and headed toward the hallway.
That’s when I saw a faint gleam of light flash off the blade of the butcher knife Dad held in his hand. As he rose from behind the table to follow her, I completely froze up. Without warning, he lunged, grabbing her from behind. He was holding her in a choke hold in the crook of his left elbow with the blade of the knife pressed up against her throat as Mom begged and pleaded for him to let her g°.
“Don’t hurt me, Art…please, don’t hurt me…you’re drunk,” she whimpered as she gasped for air and attempted to pry his arm lose.
“Oh, ain’t you perty with your hair all done up and your war paint on?” he cajoled in a mocking tone.
“But you ain’t nothin’ but a slut, are you, Dee? Speak up.who you been out whorin’ with?” he demanded between gritted teeth.
Then I remember hearing an unidentifiable sort of ripping sound. Once again, I saw a flash of light reflect from the knife as Dad abruptly jerked his right arm in an upward, sweeping motion. Not knowing what had just happened, I stood paralyzed, helplessly watching and half-expecting to see blood gush forth from my mother’s severed throat! Instead, I watched as the silk scarf she had worn tied around her neck, which was fashionable in the 1960s, fell silently to the carpet below. Mom collapsed in a sobbing heap as Dad shoved her violently to the floor and then walked away. He had not even spoken to me or acknowledged my presence.
Suddenly, I remembered Michelle, who was a toddler at the time and had stayed home with my dad. My heart raced as I sprinted down the hallway to her bedroom. I threw open the door in anticipation. Thank God, there she lay, peacefully asleep and oblivious to the ordeal I had just witnessed. And thank God I did.for Dad not having hurt my mother this time, at least physically. I gently closed the door to Michelle’s room with a sigh of relief as I heard the car spitting up gravel as Dad angrily backed down the driveway to leave. Then I headed back to the family room to comfort my mother.
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
Any witness to violence is a victim of violence. In June 1990, the New York Times reported on a study that found one traumatic experience that makes a person feel totally powerless can be enough to permanently alter their brain chemistry. The result is called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Children are especially vulnerable to PTSD because of their limited coping skills and inability to integrate the horror of trauma.
During such experiences, there is a tremendous surge of adrenaline, what is commonly referred to as the fight-or-flight syndrome. This is our body’s natural alarm system that alerts us when it is necessary to flee or fight for our survival. It is controlled by the limbic system of the brain. Additionally, endorphins (hormones) are released to ease pain and assist in memory formation. A cellular imprint is then made upon the brain in order for it to remember the life-threatening circumstance. This keeps the brain from being caught off guard again in the future and can precipitate a continual state of hypervigilance or constant anxiety (Bradshaw 157). I often jokingly refer to this feeling as having my accelerator stuck. Believe me though, when it’s happening, it is no laughing matter!
The most common symptom of PTSD is kindling. You will recall that kindling is the phenomenon that occurs when minor stressors, either negative or positive, cause an unpleasant arousal and increase in the release of norepinephrine and cortisol. This may further trigger panic attacks, mood irritability, fright, and insomnia. If the arousal is chronic, it can create symptoms of avoidance, social withdrawal, isolation, and depression. Each time a crisis situation has passed, the individual will have a hormonal withdrawal. This leads to additional symptoms such as restlessness, agitation, trembling, and other flu-like symptoms. Hence, the victim often becomes frightened again, which results in another hormonal surge. The kindling reoccurs, becoming a vicious cycle. People often try to self- medicate these unpleasant withdrawal symptoms with some form of addictive behavior or substance (Bradshaw 158).
10
The Era of Sex, Drugs, and
Rock-and-Roll!
“Manic depression is touching my soul
I know what I want but I just don’t know
How to go about getting’ it
Feeling, sweet feeling
Drops from fingers, fingers
Manic depression is catchin’ my soul…”
—Jimi Hendrix
My parents were really young compared to most of my classmates’ parents, having married in their teens. Neither had a formal education past high school, and my dad spoke with a distinct, Appalachian drawl. Dad was a humorous, gen- tle-natured man who loved hunting and fishing. He didn’t like crowds. In contrast to my mother, he wasn’t much of a social butterfly. Unfortunately, like a lot of good ‘ol boys, he had a mean streak when he drank. Both his father and younger brother were alcoholics. Dad had joined the United States Army when he turned eighteen. He was stationed in Germany when he came home on leave and met my mother at a roller skating rink in Ashland, Kentucky. They were both self-proclaimed graduates of the School of Hard Knocks, and they had left their clannish roots down south in search of employment and a brighter future together in the Midwest.
Born in 1959, I was at the tail end of the Baby Boomers. Growing up in the post-Vietnam war era, I had missed the heyday of the flower child and the call to unity, love, and peace that so deeply resonated to my soul. I loved Sonny and Cher, and I knew the words to every Beatles song. I wanted so badly to be a hippie, but I was too young!
No, mine would be the era of sex, drugs and rock-and-roll, a generation of apathetic souls caught up in the drama of their own little worlds who would choose to rebel, get stoned, and ignore society’s problems rather than mobilize and do something about them. As a result, I would spend the majority of my adult life psychologically and/or physically dependent on drugs to escape my anger, pain, and symptoms of anxiety and depression.
That ‘70s Show, which is my favorite TV sitcom, so accurately depicts life as it was back then in the Midwest, including the cliquish group wars, the senseless pranks, and the youthful experimentation. In fact, I spent many hours in my own friends’ basements passing doobies around as we discussed the latest piece of small-town gossip. Few of us knew or cared anything about world politics. Most of us had no aspirations to go to college or any career goals. The majority would end up raising families or working in one of the local auto plants, Delco and Chrysler. Some would inherit responsibilities—and/or acreage—on their family farms. Our world pretty much ended at Indianapolis and Chicago, which was the furthest distance most of us had ever been away from home.
At school, I attempted to achieve my way out of my reality at home. I was constantly seeking the approval of my educators and adult mentors. I was an insatiable reader with a sharp mind and
quick wit, a straight-A student, and a local beauty queen. My teachers liked me, but that didn’t make me any more popular with my peers. They openly taunted my need for validation by the adult world.
When I won a scholarship to Brazil in 1976 as a foreign exchange student my junior year of high school, it was the opening of a whole new world to me. Brazilians were warm, hospitable people who had large, extended families and a true sense of community. I lived with a family of five in an apartment building in Sao Paulo. There were three teenage girls ages seventeen, sixteen, and thirteen—Maria Virginia, Maria Fernanda, and Maria Claudia. The oldest girl, Virginia, had been an exchange student herself and had just returned from Ohio. As is the custom, her family was reciprocating and housing a student from the United States. She spoke English fluently and quickly set about teaching me the Portuguese language.
I love to talk. I’m a Gemini. It’s in my nature. So, in three month’s time, I became fluent in Portuguese. I loved the Brazilian people and the beautiful country itself. I spent time on the beaches of Santos and in Rio de Janeiro. I saw the statue of Christ at Sugar Loaf Mountain, visited the northern state of Mato Grosso, and learned to traverse a foreign city of millions of people free from fear. Most importantly, I was received into the family unit and home of these wonderful people, as though I was one of their own. My Brazilian parents called me Maria Gwendolyn. For nine months, life was like a young girl’s fantasy. Nobody knew about my past. They treated me like a princess, and I blossomed.
I attended a private, Catholic girl’s school and hung out in exclusive country clubs and nightclubs with my sisters and their friends. Sometimes, Virginia would take me to campus with her. She had graduated high school and was studying elementary education at Mackenzie University in Sao Paulo. I loved the bohemian feel of the student body, the free and open forum of the classes, and the electric exchange of information and ideas between the teachers and the students. I knew then that I wanted to go to college.
When I returned to the United States during the second semester of my senior year, I was even more estranged from my peer group. A Brazilian student had come home with me to stay with us for six months, again the reciprocity rule of student exchange. She had been a friend of mine in Brazil, so we got along really well with one another. We would talk up a storm, of course, in Portuguese. Bell (short for Maria Isabel) didn’t speak English very well, so I accommodated her in her own language. That didn’t help me fit in any better with my classmates. Foreigners were looked down the nose at, just like they do Fes in That ‘70s Show. The fact we spoke a language nobody understood irked everybody else. I admit that it was rude, but we didn’t mean to be rude. I found myself frequently defending my Brazilian student, and it placed an even wider rift between the locals and me.
All of my differences contributed to a torturous experience in school, where I was teased, ostracized, and gossiped about endlessly. It took me fifteen years before I would finally return to the scene of the crime for a class reunion. It took an additional ten before I would return once more and experience some closure and healing around that particular trauma in my life. Meg was the one who had encouraged me to attend my twenty-fifth class reunion. That road trip back to Greentown was one of the last carefree, fun times we would share together.
The need to succeed I had developed as a form of self-validation when I was a child would become an addiction later in life. Under the guise of accomplishment, a workaholic emerged. I used to think, because I was always busy, I was an accomplished, productive member of society. What I didn’t realize was that I was running from my emotions, fears, and memories from childhood while using busy-ness (business) as my excuse to do so. I was afraid to stay idle for too long for fear my past would catch up with me. With little time left over for family and friendships, my life became all about my work. I would enjoy ten years of fasttrack career success in industry before life came to a screeching halt and I collapsed, physically exhausted, depressed, and alone.
My point is, even given the best circumstances later in life (a good marriage, a lucrative career, a nice home, and so forth), one cannot run from the psychological repercussions of a traumatic childhood. The repressed pain haunts the psyche and manifests itself in the form of nightmares, depression, and obsessive-compulsive behavior at best. At worst, it develops into fits of anger and rage or other self- destructive behavior such as promiscuity and substance abuse.
A House Divided Cannot Stand
It really is not surprising that my sister, Michelle, and I have never been close. Besides the fact we were six years apart in age, Michelle’s temperament is completely different from mine. She exhibited a quick, volatile temper very early in life. I, on the other hand, have always been a people pleaser. Fearing that expression of my anger would isolate me from others, I stuffed it down inside. Because of this, my father identified more closely with me than with my sister. When our parents fought, Dad would often take me and leave, separating the fight into two camps: theirs and ours.
I enjoyed these times alone with Dad. We would stop by the local grocery store and buy beanie-weenies, cheese and crackers, and a bottle of pop (as I called it back then). Then we would go sit by the reservoir and skip rocks while we ate and talked about God and Dad’s philosophy on life.
Picture Andy Taylor (Griffith) as he would often instruct little Opie on life’s deeper lessons. That TV character so closely resembled my father in his youth. Why, shucks, they even talked alike! Unfortunately, sometimes Dad’s instructions to me were less than well-balanced.
“The man is the leader of his house. It says so in the Bible,” he would say. “You should never challenge the authority of your husband! Even if you don’t agree with him, he is the decision maker, and you should support him one hundred percent.”
(What excellent advice that would turn out to be when both he and my mother later chastised me as an adult, for what they perceived as allowing my husband to manipulate and control me.) His talks would always end with the admonishment, “Don’t ever be like your mother!”
Finally, after twenty-three years of fighting and dysfunction, my parents divorced. I was twenty at the time and a junior at Indiana University in Bloom- ington. Michelle was fourteen years old and a freshman in high school still living at home. This time, she would be the only one there to bear the brunt of my mother’s emotional storm. I can only imagine what she went through!
Surprisingly, I was devastated by my parents’ divorce. Even though our household had been so turbulent, it was all that I knew. I felt like the foundation of my very life had been swept away, and I was supposedly a full-grown adult at the time! For the first time, it hit me that I no longer had a home to go home to. I was on my own. This feeling would later help me as a child advocate to identify with children removed from their homes for neglect and abuse that, even though their lives were painfully dysfunctional at home, would cling to their parents and abusers out of fear of the unknown. It never occurred to them that there was something better than what they were living.
I think my mother resented my admiration for my father because our relationship was so crippled emotionally. She saw him for who he was in totality. I, on the other hand, idealized my dad. To me, he was a wise, compassionate, funny, brave, noble man who loved and feared God. I still saw him through the eyes of a child back then. He was my hero, my protectorate, my stability, and my security!
During their divorce, my mother would abruptly remove the veil of that illusion when she and a friend followed my father and his mistress to a local motel. Mom listened as my dad and his girlfriend had their interlude in an adjacent room. Thank God, I don’t remember all the details because I was so freaked out by the story as she recounted it that I nearly lost consciousness. I remember the room spinning amidst the sound of her mockery, moaning, and laughing. I wanted to run. I wanted to burst out the door and never look back! I was sick, angry, and disgusted! I was angry at my father for his deception and lies, for pretending to be something
he was not. I was angry at my mother for exposing me to this mental and emotional anguish. I was disgusted with them both.
I ended up taking Mom to the emergency room that night because she thought she was having a heart attack. Fortunately, it was only a panic attack, but the episode scared me enough and angered me to the extent that it was a defining moment in my growth process. Not only had my family structure disintegrated, but I had been completely debased spiritually as well. Everything Dad had taught me about God—everything about morality and what was right and what was wrong—now all came into question. Life seemed like a sick joke, and I felt betrayed, alone, and adrift in the world. So much for my happy ending!
Cross-Generational Bonding
When parents cross generation lines by sharing secrets or dividing the loyalty of children against other members of the family, a special alliance or coalition is formed. Cross-generational bonding, also referred to as emotional incest, is extremely harmful to children because they become caught in a confusing web of loyalty and deception. When a child is used to fulfill their mother’s or father’s disappointment and emptiness in the marital relationship, he or she loses the innocence of childhood. When the marriage is in crisis, the child takes on the responsibility for restoring family harmony because of his or her own need for self-preservation and survival. Cross-generational bonding is generally a symptom of severe family dysfunction (Bradshaw 23).
