A Girl Named Sue

ABSTRACT

This piece reflects on generational trauma in the author’s family through the lives of a girl named Sue. Born into a working-class home in Missouri, Sue grew up with an emotionally fragile, narcissistic mother and an alcoholic father, in a family marked by various forms of abuse. The damage showed up in her siblings’ lives as addictions and serious emotional disorders.

Sue married young and pregnant, joining another person shaped by trauma. Their relationship, like her later marriages, was emotionally unhealthy and often violent, especially with her alcoholic husband, who beat and degraded her. Though she tried to present a respectable image to the outside world and to be a good mother to her nine children, her unresolved trauma and chronically overwhelmed nervous system meant the pain was passed on to the next generation.

As an adult, and especially after Sue’s death, the author began to understand his own “trauma memory” and how it connected to patterns of abuse and emotional damage that had been repeating for generations. Drawing on Alice Miller, Virginia Woolf, and biblical texts, he situates Sue’s story within a broader, long-standing pattern of child abuse, societal denial, and spiritual brokenness — arguing that many families live out similar stories and that facing this truth is painful but necessary.

INTRODUCTION

I am composing a post that I wish I had authored years earlier, reflecting upon recent efforts concerning the trauma inherited through successive generations of my family. I have endeavored to articulate precisely how I reached this stage in life at seventy-one years of age.

MAIN BODY

This story is about a girl named Sue who grew up to have nine children of her own, and she did all she could to be a good mom to them. She was born in Springfield, Missouri (the details of her life are as clear as they are going to be) to a working-class family of at least six children. History has it that there was a child who was institutionalized at a young age, and the older five were raised by their mother and father.

All reports indicate that Sue was affected by various forms of abuse originating from her emotionally fragile mother. (Yes, I knew the woman and can attest to these statements) and an alcoholic father. This situation took its toll on all the siblings. Sue had an older brother who later in life drank himself to death and at least one sister who exhibited emotional challenges from trauma received, resulting in an unfortunate diagnosis of borderline personality disorder.

Sue married early, we are told, at seventeen years old; of course, that debate continued into her later years. We do know she met the man she would marry in Wichita, Kansas, one of the large Kansas towns, shortly after she became pregnant with me, and therefore had to marry him for better or worse. Knowing what is well documented by people much smarter than me, we know the needs of this couple were most likely those of desperation, love, and caring found at that time for them in the sexual act, considering they both arrived traveling from a place of abuse and trauma of various kinds. I have met both of their parents and siblings, and without a doubt, the abuse and dysfunction had left its mark on all the offspring, and it is worth noting that the barbarian behavior had been going on for generations. And in this case, the generational curse was extended to her offspring as well, to be discussed possibly at a later time.

“Child abuse is still sanctioned - indeed, held in high regard - in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions from how they were treated by their own parents.~ Alice Miller

Her story is a familiar one in this postmodern world, and it is a familiar story told through many generations, we're told. Sue did her best to appear normal to the community she lived in. She made sure her hair and clothes were neat and presentable when she went out to the grocery store or to church on Sundays. She also ensured her children wore their Sunday best so as not to send the wrong signals to the public. Like her husband, Sue continued to deal with childhood trauma, though she was unaware that it was the main emotional challenge to her nervous system, which was always on the verge of breaking down at any given moment. Childhood is the period of our life where abuse is the most traumatic for us. It's difficult to say exactly what flavors the trauma came in. It is most obvious that her adult siblings were all impacted by abuse, whether physical, verbal, emotional, or sexual, from an alcoholic father and a likely narcissist mother.

The story of Sue’s life is, in fact, very similar to many stories today. I could be writing about any number of people I’ve known in my lifetime, but I’m sharing her story because Sue is my mother. Sue, her mother, her father, and her grandparents were people who were emotionally wrecked — emotionally damaged — as children, and as they grew into adults and had children of their own, they passed on a lot of really unhealthy stuff to their children, and the story continues. We propagate the cycle of abuse and trauma that needs medicating and causes us to make terrible decisions about who we marry and how we medicate this pain for lifetimes, most often.

Sue and her children felt the repercussions of her father's and her first husband's alcoholism, as the effects of the abuse lingered over time. Everyone was now experiencing trauma from both adults in the relationship. If Sue hadn't been beaten and spoken down to before, she was certainly being treated badly now by her alcoholic husband, and in fact, she was beaten often, I know! From there, she removed an emotionally abusive man from her life, who amplified the pain she had already experienced from her childhood. She divorced him, finally, and soon after, she married another emotionally distant man, who only heightened the pain and anxiety in her life. I remember visiting her after the second marriage failed, and her best was sitting in a padded chair with a cigarette in one hand and coffee in the other. This was the best it got for her in minimizing the anxiety in her life. Her nervous system was constantly on the brink of firing off into the atmosphere. This was the best she could do to medicate the pain of too much trauma memory evolving into Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD).

Sue's story didn't really get any better as life went on. As things typically do, her marriage failed badly, with eight children in tow. She quietly remarried a man who could offer support for her and her children. Still, he was as emotionally unavailable as her previous husband, and the trauma and pain embedded in her nervous system continued to cause conflict with her new husband and the children, now growing up into young adults. Simply put, it takes healthy adults to raise healthy adults, and this isn't where this story leads us.

It was during this time in our lives that I truly felt sympathy for her; my compassion deeply took hold for her. Many years after her death, I began to understand my own trauma memory and the pain I had tried to medicate at different times, and I was able to realize what had been happening in my family generations ago as I pieced it together.

“The truth about our childhood is stored up in our body, and although we can repress it, we can never alter it. Our intellect can be deceived, our feelings manipulated, our conceptions confused, and our bodies tricked with medication. But someday our body will present its bill, for it is as incorruptable as a child, so, still whole in spirit, will accept no compromises or excuses, and it will not stop tormenting us until we stop evading the truth.” ~ Alice Miller

I wrote this piece about a girl named Sue and the life she lived, which many women experience as well. It's a common story for many today. The other part of her story concerns her children and the memories they carry. Based on what I know and what I've read from wiser people, her story is being lived by many and has been for many generations. Author and psychiatrist Alice Miller was writing about the child abuse problem as far back as the 1950s. It's another reality that the barbarian hordes don't want to face; we might have to take a long, honest look at ourselves and admit we're horrible creatures if we did.

Child abuse is a serious problem that has persisted for centuries. Virginia Woolf generally discussed the mental health of the West in 1910 and is quoted as saying, “All human relations have shifted, those between masters and servants, husbands and wives, parents and children. And when human relations change, there is at the same time a change in religion, conduct, politics, and literature.”  The Bible addresses this as well. Check out Isaiah chapter 59:10-18 and the first two chapters of Paul’s letter to the Romans.

“ There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands: there is no one who seeks God.

All have turned away, they have together become worthless: there is no one who does good, not even one.

Their throats are open graves: their tongues practice deceit.

The poison of vipers is on their lips.

Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood: ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.

There is no fear of God before their eyes.” ~ Isaiah 59: 10-18

Miller, Alice, 1997, The Drama of the Gifted Child, New York: Perennial, An Imprint of HarperCollins