Go to Your Room if You’re Gonna Cry – Breaking Generational Trauma

by Laura Baumeister

Listen to Executive Director Gabriel Nathan read this post aloud:

For many years, the same question plagued me: Why am I so angry? My friends, coworkers, and extended family have never seen a hint of that anger. All the same, it used to boil within me, threatening to explode at the slightest hint of inconvenience. I’d learned enough to guess that my rage was really a cloak for sadness and pain. A few years ago, I decided to trace through my memories and listen for a whisper of where it all began.

I grew up in a loving home, so to speak. It was certainly loving in contrast to the homes of others I know. Still, it left a lot to be desired. I didn’t realize this fully until I grew up, developed my mind’s eye, and recognized that the childlike nurturing I received from my mother expired somewhere around my thirteenth birthday. Perhaps I was lucky in that regard as my father’s emotional involvement died off long before that. Somewhere in between, I got lost in a flux that I only began to understand as an adult.

Giving a bit of background on my parents’ upbringing will help shed light on how they, in-turn, parented. My father and his three brothers were raised on a farm in rural Oklahoma. From what I know, it was a good childhood. His father (who passed away when I was 14, after living with cancer for years) was a harsh man. One could easily tell that he found children a nuisance. Dad’s mother was a sweet gem. She wasn’t overly expressive, but it was easy to know you were loved by her. My sisters and I grew up quite close to this grandmother. There was balance in that home.

My mother’s childhood lacked that equilibrium. She was one of seven girls raised in severe poverty and sexually abused by their father from puberty until each of them left home. I sense the piercing bluntness of that sentence. It’s become too simple to summarize the details of her childhood trauma after processing them for over thirty years. I learned of it when I was only six years old. My mother sat me down and told me all about it, needing to be comforted. At an age when I was learning to read, I was learning about sexual assault in conversation. It was porch talk.

Occasionally, I ponder my parents’ union. They were an interesting pair. My father is not an emotionally revealing man, to say the least. My mother was almost recklessly emotional, having survived so much and given so little direction on how to heal once she escaped. In any case, these two humans fell in love and ended up with four daughters.

I can recall the silly, endearing games my father would play with me and my sisters before we were school-age, mostly because I have seen those interactions in home movies. I wish I could put my finger on why that connection was lost as we grew older. I’ve wondered if it was harder for him to relate to us as we grew up. Perhaps it was because my mother had a strong presence and he deferred to her on most things.

For example: my father knew of every horror my mother had lived through and he still loaded us up in the car to go see my mother’s parents regularly. Mom insisted. This happened from before I can remember until I was a teenager. I have my own scars from that place—memories that barely respond when I probe. A sickening sadness lies there. I’m honestly not sure how much I ever told of it, or if anyone listened. I was so steeped in generational trauma that I couldn’t grasp what the terms emotional and sexual trauma meant when I first heard them as a teenager.

Even in the throes of Stockholm Syndrome, my mother was really stellar at giving us a magical upbringing. She threw the best parties. She made the best food. She was the most creative person I’ve ever known. Outwardly, it all looked perfect. Behind the scenes, there was manipulation, paranoia, and disproportionate punishments. As long as we were willing to essentially “play house,” the world was our oyster. Once we grew up and grew bored with tea time and Victorian play clothes, things got shaky.

Girls tend to come into their own in a ferocious manner. It can be wondrous to witness (I should know—the gift of precious daughters continued with me—I have two of them). As the teen years loomed in my childhood home, my mother became defensive and possessive. She could not fathom why we might prefer to spend time alone or go out with friends. We began to feel caged. When we would bring this strife to our father’s attention, what was the answer?

Listen to your mother. And go to your room if you’re gonna cry.

When I first traveled along this line of memory, I felt a deep, forgotten wound. My parents responded to tears with anger and isolation. There was never room for discussion, no opportunity to plead a sensible case. The only course of action was to unnaturally soothe my mother’s childhood wounds in return for short bouts of freedom.

It became obvious that there was something unhealthy there. I remember that she went as far as attending one therapy session. I recall her sobs when she came home and told my dad about it.

“It’s too much,” she cried, “I can’t relive all of that.”

She never went back. It was heartbreaking to see so much hurt that couldn’t be healed. Time wore on. My sisters and I kept maturing. Rebellion became frequent. Mom and Dad didn’t have as much fun together. No one was enjoying themselves. We were all stretching our necks for air.

Cut to the summer of my 15th birthday, when my dad took a transfer to Colorado for work, per my mother’s wishes. Leading up to the move, no one cared what I might want or how I might feel. My emotional wound only grew. I was sent to my room in tears countless times, my heart and head full of chaos. I believe my dad would have rather stayed in Oklahoma. He chose to move for my mother. Because everything would be better in colorful Colorado.

We left so much behind in that move. We went from living on peaceful, wooded acreage, miles from the nearest small town, to living smack-dab in the middle of cookie-cutter suburbia. I went from a class size of 18 to a class size of 465. I was terrified. The culture shock felt insurmountable. I didn’t know how to grieve. I thought (and was told) I was being dramatic. Kids survive big moves all the time.

I’d always been shy. But suddenly I was withdrawn, excessively sweaty, hardly ate, only found solace in sleep, and let me tell you—I was the saddest girl in the world. You could not convince me otherwise. Next thing I knew, I was taking meds every day. It worked to squash the physical tears, but I remained in my bedroom. That’s where I belonged. The tears kept falling on the inside.

I was powerless. This is where my sadness turned to anger. I had been left without a voice too many times. A spark was born, turning to flame over the next three years. I moved out of my parents’ home a few months before I graduated high school. I had become a wildfire. I ran toward the first person who offered water, consequences be damned.

In the following years, I fought with the idea that I have clinical depression and generalized anxiety. If my parents had just cared, if I’d just been heard, I wouldn’t need medication to be happy. Instead of considering a path toward recovery, I tried to perfect my life. I figured I’d eliminate any source of stress. Still, sadness prevailed, outwardly projected as anger. I ended up with two failed marriages and no sense of self. I also was unable to process things when my mother became ill with metastatic breast cancer and passed away.

Once I pieced together where my fountain of fury began, I realized that anger can numb you. It was shielding me from joy, curiosity, grief and empathy. I needed to sit with the wound beneath the rage and figure out how to heal it. There would be no way to have real relationships that mattered and to change the course of generations beyond me if I didn’t act fast.

I did hard work in therapy. I found an antidepressant that really helps with my mood and anxiety. I’ve tried going without the medicine and finally accepted that it’s ok to have help. I need it. I wish I could have saved my mother from her childhood, but I can’t. I must heal my inner child. The one that cried alone. The one that got exposed to the elements abruptly. I’ve learned a lot about resilience and that it can seem to wane as I grow older and spend my energy on other things—my beloved husband (yes, a third one—I finally got it right), my beautiful daughters and stepson, and a career where I help others with their mental health.

Depression and anxiety are not one-time fixes. Managing them and healing from trauma is a daily journey. If you turn your back on the beast, it’ll only grow more foreboding and demanding of your attention. Take the time. Lean on others and remind yourself that every painful thing is temporary. Better days are always ahead.

I discovered something else while I was searching for my anger. I found my mantra:

As long as you are working in love to benefit the next generation, you are doing big things.

This is my driving force, aside from my faith. I had to work through my own hurt for the sake of my children. So that they won’t just remember me being angry. I don’t expect to be a perfect parent or person, but I know I get one thing right every time.  When my children cry, they aren’t sent to their rooms. They are held and they are heard. Then, together, we work toward our better days.

​EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR / EDITOR: Gabriel Nathan | DESIGN: Leah Alexandra Goldstein | SITE ORIGINATOR: Bud Clayman