We walk into my cousins’ house, and there are cheers of welcome. The house is packed with family members. Theia Effie and Theo John embrace us; some of the cousins in my generation embrace us too (but others are too busy playing somewhere else). It’s a big celebration; the adults are talking loudly and excitedly, and we all know what’s coming… a whole lot of spectacular food.
It’s the first family Easter that I remember as a little kid. Easter is the most important holiday for Greek Orthodox folks. Once the weeks of fasting for Lent, a long week of services, and finally the midnight service are complete, we know how to party.
I toddled between my parents in the living room and my cousins in the kitchen, beckoned by outrageously delicious smells. I was ready to eat now. When would it be ready? Some of my older cousins were being serious and responsible, setting the table. I watched them because I knew one day I’d be doing that too. Theo John sliced a beautifully thin slice of lamb and handed it to me. It was one of the most delectable things I’d ever eaten in my young life, but when I chomped into a piece of garlic, it was unpleasantly spicy.
We ate and ate and celebrated. I remember playing. There was probably music and likely dancing, but I don’t remember that.
This is my family. This personifies my family in so many ways. And, underneath the love, buoyancy, and celebration was a river of dark shadow, pain, horror, and secrets.
***
Don’t worry. This story ultimately has a happy ending. The important part is the road I took to get there.
You might look at my life now and say that everything is great, except for a series of health issues that are “frustratingly challenging” rather than catastrophic. Work goes up and down, but overall I love my job and am grateful for it. I love my husband, who loves me just as much. I love my family and friends, sweet Kitty, sweet home. Most significantly, I don’t feel trapped. In fact, I feel free. I feel peace. I feel the ever-present Love of the Divine always with me and all around me. I don’t ever forget that the Source of Life – what is bigger than you and me – is always here, creating everything, including you and me. Healing wouldn’t have been possible without that.
That’s great. That’s amazing. I cannot express to you enough how I am on my knees with gratitude, because life didn’t start this way. Life started with a whole lot of tough stuff. The tough stuff puts the good stuff into a whole other perspective.
I had resistance to telling you about the tough stuff. Who wants to read about more tough stuff? Isn’t life hard enough? But I tell my clients all the time about the tough stuff because they need empathy. They need to know someone gets it, has gone before them, and (somehow) got through it… and is freer, at peace, and more in love with life than previously imaginable. It’s possible.
So. Let’s talk about the tough stuff.
I was born into the deep end of generational trauma. Many of us are. It’s the hidden and sometimes forgotten traumas that lurk in the shadows and dim the lights, suppressing possibility and self-expression. I didn’t know that’s what the shadows were. I just knew the adults in my life were constantly fighting, and it was only when I was an adult that I realized the battles weren’t with their human opponents; they were with parts of themselves and with the shadows in the corners.
The battles played out on a grand stage of high drama and in quiet moments of betrayal.
Boston in the 1970s, surrounded by our Big, Fat, Greek immigrant family. Smelly cars, dirty water, and bell bottoms. Love, celebration, tradition, culture, church. Belonging. Stunning quantities of food, because our elders had starved and survived.
And lots of mental illness. My cousins still talk about how nuts my Greek grandmother was. When she died, my mom had nightmares of demons being released from her body. She was my babysitter until I turned 6.
I have a vivid memory of standing in my grandparents’ kitchen, my grandmother and father in a full-on yelling match. I was 5. I was smart enough to know they were being stupid. I started screaming to get them to stop. It didn’t work. So I hid with my mom in the living room.
My dad’s whole family yelled. Fights between my dad, uncle, and grandmother often included verbal, emotional, energetic knife cuts meant to shred the other person’s heart. A day without a fight was a day when a fight was brewing. What does a kid do with this? I knew it was wrong; I wanted it to stop, but I didn’t know a different reality, so I thought it was normal.
My dad yelled at us too. I wasn’t hurt by the times he yelled to discipline me. I was hurt by the times I was just being a kid, being dumb, clueless, or innocent. And he told me he didn’t like me anymore, that I was wrong and bad. My college therapist was the first one to teach me that being yelled at and shamed for spilling milk at dinner was verbal abuse. Dad was also incredibly, passionately, fiercely loving. I know he loved us with his whole heart. And that made the emotional whiplash even more difficult to reconcile.
There were those days he would just go berserk – something would strike him in just the wrong way, and he would start a barrage of yelling and accusations. Sometimes it was at me, or my mom, occasionally at my brother, and often at extended family or friends. He cut people out of his life the way a logger cuts trees. They had all wronged him viciously, according to him. He threatened to cut me out of his life, too. As a kid, that’s terrifying. When I was an adult, honestly, it was a relief. But more on that later.
As an adult, I learned about how Bipolar Disorder can have a rage component. I learned about how Borderline Personality Disorder and Bipolar can work together. I learned about narcissism. This helped me understand. It did not change the battle scars.
When I was 28, I took a volunteer training at a women’s shelter. They taught us about the different types of domestic violence. I thought domestic violence was just physical violence until I took that training. They described my childhood.
We spent a lot of time in that training answering the question, “Why don’t abused partners leave?” I kinda knew why it took my mom so long to leave: the shadows in the corner. We get so used to them that we don’t realize they are there and how much they are dimming the light.
My mom’s Ukrainian family wasn’t much better, just different. She’d often say that she married her mother because her mother was also, well, cuckoo. Just like my dad, my grandmother was incredibly loving. And then, in an instant, she would lose her heart and make wild accusations, tell lies to pit her daughters against each other, and create emotional chaos in her life. It wasn’t entirely her fault; later we would learn that scar tissue from a concussion during WWII made her paranoid schizophrenic. But the Borderline Personality Disorder likely had its roots in a whole lot of unresolved trauma from her family, war, and famine.
My cousin recently asked me how my mom learned to be so loving, considering how she grew up. Mom had one loving and imperfect angel: Her father. He was gentle with a sweet sense of humor. He fed the squirrels and the birds in the park. He never externalized the trauma and horrors he experienced… until the very end.
My mom was my loving and imperfect angel. She couldn’t protect me from my dad because I’m not sure she really knew how; she was part of the family system. But her mood was steadier, and her love was unconditional and fearless. It would take her decades to wake up out of the abuse and realize there was a better way.
