Crafting a Memoir Exploring Intergenerational Trauma

When my mother died, an ocean lay between us, though it might have been otherwise. I could have gone to her instead of to France. Both regret and grief engulfed me in the aftermath of her death. At the same time, I remember thinking I should not have been surprised that my mother and I had remained on opposite shores, both literally and figuratively, during her final days. The distance between us fit a familiar pattern.

(Forgiveness as Narrative Risk in Memoir.)

My need to understand the origins of that pattern, as well as its effects on my mother's and my relationship, proved to be the catalyst for the memoir. I began with the interviews I'd conducted with my mother during the last decade of her life, many of which I'd taped. These conversations, along with photographs and letters, became my primary sources, though I did not think of them that way in the beginning. Initially, I listened to my mother's stories of the past as a way to make her more present after her death.

Our interviews covered a range of subjects, including the Second World War in her native Latvia, her childhood, marriage, and medical career. My mother shared her history without drawing conclusions about how her experiences had affected her. She did not see herself as someone who had endured complex trauma, though she acknowledged that she had been suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) when she first arrived in the United States. A recurring nightmare, in which she was captured by the Soviets, led to her self-diagnosis. Once the nightmares ended, she assumed she had recovered.

Her reference to PTSD gave me a context in which to reexamine her experiences and a focus for some of my research. I identified secondary sources among books about complex PTSD and intergenerational trauma. The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk, and Trauma and Recovery, by Judith Herman, proved to be especially valuable during my early work.

In writing the memoir, I focused first on my mother's history in an effort to discover the young woman she had been before I knew her as my mother. As I returned to her narratives about the past, I started to ask questions about the consequences of the multiple traumas she had experienced. For example, what happens to a child who is forever fearful that her parents will abandon her? How does a child survive maternal abuse? What about rape? How does that influence a woman's sense of her own body?

My mother's recollections of her own mother focused primarily on their volatile relationship. She shared what little she knew of her mother's history in passing and almost as an afterthought. Having learned more about the impact of unresolved trauma, I returned to my maternal grandmother with a newfound curiosity and a compassion I'd not expected. My grandmother had also suffered the traumas of war and parental abuse, whose insidious and lasting influence played out in the way she treated my mother.

When I turned from my interviews with my mother to a contemplation of our relationship, additional secondary sources guided me. Mark Wolynn's It Didn't Start With You about inherited family trauma and its influence on the next generation helped me think deeply about the ways in which I embodied my mother's history. Annie G. Rogers's The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma provided a lens through which to consider how my family's sense of humor and the ways in which we inhabited our home told a story about the traumatic past.

I consulted other books in addition to those I have mentioned, all of which contributed to my understanding of trauma's intergenerational legacy. In addition to providing an investigative framework within which to work, these books helped me maintain the distance I needed to return to a troubled past without having those painful memories overwhelm me. That happened at times, but my research gave me a way to continue my exploration with a feeling of safety.

I also benefited from my work with a psychologist with whom I'd had a therapeutic relationship for several years before my mother died. As I navigated my grief and confusion concerning my mother's and my relationship, my therapist recommended reading material I would not have discovered on my own, including books in Jungian psychology. Our discussions clarified my thinking about the patterns of my mother's and my interactions. I began to appreciate how the injuries my mother had experienced before my birth compromised our earliest bond. Both of us were, in some ways, fated to behave as we did. Understanding that set me on the path toward change and healing.  

Finally, I asked my therapist to read an early draft of the memoir. His comments enlarged my perspective and deepened my exploration of my mother's history and its effects on me as her oldest child and a daughter. I also relied on his expertise to confirm the validity of some of the conclusions I had drawn regarding trauma's psychological legacy. My subsequent drafts benefited from his wisdom.

When I began my memoir, I did not imagine that I was writing a book about trauma's complex legacy within my family. The exploration of my mother's history led me there. And the requirements of that exploration led me to secondary sources that proved invaluable in my work. I could not have written the book without drawing on these resources. Or, perhaps, it would be more accurate to say that I would have written a different book, and one from which I would have learned less, both about my mother and myself.

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