“After I looked at Veterans’ Children, I began thinking how much my childhood had many of the qualities you describe about your own,” an acquaintance emailed me last week.  “But my parents weren’t veterans.  They came to America to escape pogroms in Russia.”   Another email said “I think my mother must have had PTSD from living through the blitz bombings in London during WWII.”

Though this website focuses on the aftermath of a veteran’s trauma, people whose parents are not veterans are recognizing their own childhoods in the stories.

Trauma is not for the soldier alone.  Trauma seems an inevitable part of the human condition.  A hurricane, a car wreck, random violence, hate crimes.

Whenever a parent suffers shock or even prolonged stress, their personality and behavior change.  Without some form of healing, the change manifests itself in either melancholy or tension filling a house.  And the children absorb that energy.

A cruel characteristic of the young human brain is that children see themselves as being the cause of every effect they perceive.  So they blame themselves for the unhappiness or anger they feel within their families.  This perception of responsibility creates a desperate assignment to make it all better by making our parents happy.  But when our bringing cookies to our father, our performing little plays for our mother, our being the perfect student or athlete does not work, what can we think but that we are not good enough, not loveable enough, not inherently valuable?

As we would give anything to win our parents’ approval, we take on their moodiness, depression, or anger.  We breathe in their pain.

My hope is that by recognizing the dynamic between a veteran with PTSD and their children, we will begin to understand and care about the ripple effect of trauma.  Then we might develop the capacity to see how trauma is self-perpetuating.  It’s a universal pattern that we see most clearly today in veterans’ families.  This is because our society is finally recognizing veterans’ PTSD.  Perhaps if we could see how often domestic violence and familial histories of depression or feuding result from trauma that keeps repeating itself in every generation, we might begin to find the motivation to heal ourselves and one another.  And change our violent ways.

Can we imagine ending the pain and nurturing children free of horrors they never suffered or witnessed?  Free to reveal a humanity where a child’s joy thrives undiminished.

The Multigenerational Ripple of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

The Multigenerational Ripple of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)