Did you know that people with red hair have a mutant gene responsible for their ginger status? This mutation creates maladaptive hormone receptors that control two functions: melanocyte-stimulating hormone (for pigmentation) and endorphins (the pain relieving hormone). This leaves red haired people with paler skin and a much higher risk for skin cancer as well as more sensitive to certain types of pain and more resistant to anesthesia and local pain blockers such as Novocain (no wonder I dread going to my dentist who has laughed at my suggestion of these very facts). Being a natural born, second generation ginger myself, I believe that this mutation makes me an honorary member of The X-Men. My super powers might only be my ability to dissociate and the fact that I am unable to smell my own flatulence (true), but I claim mutant status nonetheless. And I, just like you, and just like all X-Men, have an origin story.
I discovered my origin story at the tender age of 29. As I was excavating and contextualizing my history of sexual abuse and acknowledging lengthy gaps in memory and experience over the course of my childhood I eventually found the courage and the curiosity to confront my parents with what I did know of my childhood and my abuse. I confess that I do not have any recollection at all of my initial phone call with my mother in which I began to tell my story but I do have clear recollections of several months of conversations about this topic. My revelations were met with a complicated mix of defensiveness, skepticism, concern, tearful apology, and mostly confession about my mother's own trauma history. Yep, turns out my story is the story of a family legacy of sexual abuse and trauma.
I would discover that my mother was sexually molested by an older brother as a young child and that she continues to be unaware if any of her other siblings were abused in the same way. I learned that her father was often verbally and physically abusive in the household and was an alcoholic who would eventually die due to complications of alcoholism when my mother was 10 years old. I learned that my mother's older brother who had molested her eventually walked into the woods and shot himself to death leaving his wife and two children to survive him when he was in his 30's. And I learned that my mother's primary goal after having me was to ensure that my older brother would not touch or hurt me in the same ways as her older brother did. It was BY DESIGN that my brother and I were never and are not very close with each other. It was this focus on protecting me from my brother that left a blind spot that allowed for me to be sexually abused by someone else for so many years without my mother or my parents questioning my behaviors or even what they sometimes saw. It was my mother's own trauma history that left her emotionally distanced from both of her children in ways that lacked opportunity for deep emotional safety and intimacy. I do not blame my mother, or my father, for what John did to me during all of those years, but I do acknowledge that their own histories, their own maladaptive coping strategies, their own ability to dissociate and to be emotionally disconnected, absolutely set the stage for the opportunity for my abuse to happen and my inability to discuss or share it until I was well into adulthood. This is what is known as intergenerational trauma in the psychology and trauma informed therapeutic world. It essentially is the acknowledgement that parents who are suffering from chronic emotional, physical, and relational difficulties related to their own post traumatic stress often transfer their own maladaptive coping strategies to their children. This can increase the odds that their children are vulnerable to experiencing their own trauma and often struggle with their own health, mental health, and relationship difficulties.
