Blame It On Society, 3

Not all trauma is bad.  Still with me?  I write here as a trauma survivor.  I heard an interesting segment on CBC Radio One, our national broadcaster here in Canada.  It has something to do with the way that parents nowadays have been trying to relive their childhood through their own kids and how damaging this is to their progeny.  Parents hold onto their children a lot tighter than they used to and encourage them to remain dependent, or in a state of perpetual childhood, for as long as possible. 

I am thinking here of a conversation I had with a Latin American friend the other day.  Now, families in Latin American cultures tend to be a lot tighter than in North America.  The adult children often live with their parents till they themselves get married or for longer.  Parents maintain an active role in their children's lives.  Independence is not encouraged and individuation for the adult children is delayed, denied or stunted.  For this reason I suggested to my friend that Latin Americans, for their ongoing emotional dependence on their parents, do not mature emotionally the way the more independent North Americans do.  He actually agrees with me about this.

I heard another segment last night on CBC.  It was an Ideas program, a documentary about the perspectives of children.  It is suggested in this documentary that children need the freedom to have adventures and take risks.  Without this freedom and this latitude for risk taking they do not grow, they do not develop into balanced and mature adults.

This has certainly been my own experience.  Growing up, we were given by our parents a lot of independence, freedom and trust and I am convinced the benefits outweighed the risks.  We didn't always behave like little angels and sometimes we could be very cruel to each other, but even after being the target of such meanness I still say it was worth it.  We learned how to cooperate, dialogue, compromise and problem solve, all without parental oversight or intervention.  On the other hand it did nothing to spare some of us from some very brutal bullying so it certainly wasn't all cake and ice cream.

I also remember even now at the age of fifty-nine as clearly as it happened yesterday my first big solo childhood adventure.  I was four years old.  It was summertime and Mom and I were the only ones in the house.  My big brother was off somewhere playing with his friends and Dad was in the beer parlour in far away Marpole (we lived in Richmond on the other side of the bridge) with his own extended family of siblings and friends.  I somehow became obsessive about wanting to play with Dad.  Mom didn't feel like it.  She was busy washing down the kitchen cupboards.  She was always busy doing something around the house.  She simply never felt like playing with us.  I was beginning to nag her about wanting to play with Dad.  She lost patience with me and told me to get lost.  I did.

I decided that I would walk over to the beer parlour at the Fraser Arms Hotel where I would find my dad and tell him that I wanted to play with him for a while.  I thought I remembered the route, from the many car rides we had there.  I knew that I would want to get on to Number Three Road and walk parallel to the big long red horse barns near the race track as far as the Oak Street Bridge, then walk over the bridge and turn left and there I would find the Fraser Arms Hotel.

I had no idea it would be so far.  On my little four year old legs I made it as far as the corner of Number Three Road and Westminster Highway.  I was tired from walking and it all seemed so far now I could not imagine going any further.  I panicked, stood still on the side of the road and began crying.  A big black car, a Sedan, I think, pulled over.  The occupants were an elderly couple.  The lady was tall and stately looking with her grey hair worn in a bun.  She asked me what was wrong, my name, where I lived.  They drove me to the police station where they left me with two very kind young cops.  I sat on a rocking chair and one of them told me stories while feeding me candies.

Eventually my very grim faced parents arrived.  They drove me home.  There was no scolding, neither were there any hugs or kisses.  They had thought I was dead but held back any expressions of joy or relief upon finding me alive and well.

This experience, which actually ended very well, did not traumatize me.  Rather I have continued to this day to be curious, adventurous and independent.  I have become a world traveller but now I take care to plan and map out my journey a bit before arriving in a big strange and mysterious city where I've never previously set foot.

I say that that experience didn't traumatize me, but living with my family, yes, that was for me very traumatizing, living among cold unhappy people where anger and violence were the accepted norm.  This is nothing unusual, given that this was during the fifties and sixties a very common and normal kind of family environment in Canada.  Many of us were raised by parents whom themselves grew up traumatized by their own parents and the difficult and fearful times they were living in.  Some of us have been brave enough to seek healing from this and to do what we can to struggle forward, creating for ourselves a place of refuge and hope and slowly learning to let this place expand to include others and eventually the world.