Adding intense grief to a history of trauma is enough to shake anyone to the core. Childhood trauma eats away at your insides–it burrows deep, sinks its claws in, and holds on tight with venomous teeth. It seems like the longer we hold onto it and let it fester the more it hurts. 

Unhealed or unresolved trauma can cause significant medical and/or mental health problems in your adult life. So what happens to your unresolved childhood trauma when your mom or dad dies?

My mom’s death forced me to see the extent to which my childhood trauma had twisted itself like an invasive vine choking the life out of my family tree. Grief forced me to have a hard and uncomfortable conversation with myself. I had to take an honest look at the trauma my mother experienced and passed down to me as well as my own personal trauma. Grief showed me that I needed to break trauma’s grip on my life.

What causes childhood trauma?

According to the Cleveland Clinic, some traumatic events that cause long term stress include:

• Sexual abuse
• Domestic violence
• Verbal abuse
• Neglect or abandonment
• Bullying
• Natural disasters
• Shootings
• Car crashes
• Living in a warzone
• Witnessing serious injuries or death
• Parental divorce
• Loss of a family member

My mother and I both can check several boxes on that list, with enough stories to fill a book or two.   

My father was abusive, angry with a hairpin trigger, or absent. His had an unstable, short fuse. Outbursts like breaking furniture or dishes, punching holes in walls, or shouting insults and profanity happened daily.

As a kid I shoved clothes and toys into piles at the back of my closet. When my father raged I’d climb in, slide the door shut, burrow down, and bury myself in the clutter to hide and muffle the sounds. We had a small house, so I still felt the impact of his fists breaking the drywall and heard the metallic boom of my brother’s body hitting the washing machine.

I feel sorry for my father, but I don’t forgive him. His struggles with emotional regulation destroyed his marriage and our family. I lived a childhood of fear and coercion, and as a mostly neglected kid, I raised myself, with no healthy examples of friendship or love to model. My instinct was to seek love and validation in all the wrong places. It’s no surprise that I grew up to self sabotage and tear my life apart.

We had a house fire and lost nearly everything when I was eight years old. My pets died in the smoke. The damage was so bad that almost nothing could be recovered. My family spent several months living in a single hotel room. My mom gave me a black garbage bag of donated clothing that didn’t fit. The hotel had a pool, and I spent many unsupervised hours simply floating and staring at the ceiling. There was an old story that long ago a young girl died in a house fire on the same piece of land where the hotel was later built. I spent my days wandering the halls, searching and quietly calling for her.

My family hovered at or below the poverty line, and for a long time I thought money was the solution we needed. I dreamed of being wealthy so that I could change my mother‘s life. I wanted to buy her a nice house that wasn’t full of broken things, pay her bills, and make it so she didn’t need to eat expired food or shop only the clearance racks. 

My mother grew up in scarcity and found the same in marriage. She must have dreamed of a better life, but mostly she kept trying to paste beautiful wallpaper over crumbling walls. She learned to smile and look pretty while keeping the bad things hidden. She knew how to make everything seem fine from the outside, to close the curtains on things the neighbors shouldn’t see. Eventually she needed alcohol to escape the reality of our abusive life.

Having money would have eased the hardship, but she needed more. I couldn’t give her back her dreams. I don’t think my mom even allowed herself to dream. I think she grew up feeling unworthy and that she wasn’t strong enough to change anything. My mom gave up on a lot, and she gave up on me, too. She probably thought she never even had a chance for better. 

Life will trip you up. You will fall. 

I wanted a better life but followed swiftly down my mother’s path by creating a public persona—a fake version of myself who appeared happy, healthy, and well adjusted. It was exhausting to be this person while the real me crumbled and crashed in private. I lived a messy, frantic, anxious, depressed life behind closed doors.

Some trauma I inherited or absorbed from her. Some we experienced together as it occurred. A large chunk of it happened when I became old enough to make bad decisions as an insecure, fearful young person with no support or guidance on how to stay safe or be happy in the world. A pile of trauma can easily become the puppet master of your life, pulling the strings and guiding your decisions.

I spent nearly two decades pretending and was never able to take action until my mother died. Grief shifted something at the soul level. 

I grieved her death like she was the only good thing I’d ever have.

I grieved for her mistakes.

I grieved when I acknowledged and saw her weaknesses as a mother and a human.

I grieved when I realized how much pain she surely tamped down while living with her limitations and choices.

I grieved because she couldn’t be strong and break the cycle for me.

I grieved with anger that she closed the curtains and hid instead of protecting my childhood.

I grieved because eventually I knew she did the best she could–the expectations of her parents, her toxic marriage, and the pressure on women in her time had forced her into compliance.

I grieved because I wanted better for her.

Everything you need is inside of you. When you hit rock bottom you will bounce, not break. 

Trauma can be inherited…but so can healing. 

Long ago I was a parent who shouted. I felt the urge to smash things in anger surge into my hands like a power I couldn’t control. I squeezed my fists and my eyes tightly closed and desperately pleaded with any higher power listening: I am not a monster. I will not be like him.     

I am the speed bump. I am the roadblock. I am the cycle breaker.

As much as my mother was part of the poison, she is also the antidote. Grieving her death made me see the tidal wave cresting over my head. Instead of letting it crash, I will absorb the tsunami of dysfunction that swept my parents away and threatens to destroy me.

I am crushed and sorry and sick that my mom had to die for me to realize this, but I know now that I can’t waste any more time or let that trauma seep through to my children.

Break the cycle.

It’s hard to break the cycle. My life looks nothing like my mother‘s life anymore. I’m working (with lots of therapy) to keep the anger, fear, anxiety, and depression in the past. It’s hard to be on a new path, walking away from everything I knew. It feels unsafe, and yet also like I’m walking toward safety and a happiness that I’ve never experienced.

Sometimes change with grief is a slow climb. Sometimes grieving pushes us over the edge, causing swift change to happen in our lives. Maybe an inner need for change has been brewing for a long time in your heart. Maybe you unexpectedly lost a parent and got pushed off the cliff into an immediate realization that you must change your life. 

Either way, here you are. Here is the moment.  

Being the cycle breaker is hard work, but I think it’s worth it. Hopefully my children or their children will never know that once there was a tsunami that swept people away and once there was a cliff where many were pushed off. I will give my children calm water and a sunny day.

You are worthy and strong enough to make this change.