I read every word. The phrase “inherited continuations” struck me. I nodded “yes” to that phrase. Grandparents never spoke to me of the Holocaust--I just know factoids, not stories. I saw numbers tattooed on arms. I heard and absorbed stories from many survivors who weren’t my grandparents. I honored their silence, and reluctantly accept my dad’s same seven or eleven tales he’s willing to tell. He doesn’t realize I recognize his scripts as armor--he thinks he’s inviting closeness telling the same stories with the same words on various occasions. I see them as rehearsed social dances and gave up plumbing his depths. I got as far as I’ll get. He’s let me know by refusing to elaborate on any aspect of his scripts. So, I love and cherish the scripts, for they relay his body of wisdom. Maybe he’s shielding us as well as himself. Yes, I think the refusal to reveal new layers is also passed down, and is an act of love--of shielding us from the wars they lived through.
I remained in Manhattan during and beyond 9/11, suffered nightmares we were under attack for a year, and still bristle when it’s brought up. We brought our daughters to the top of Freedom Tower and from the window I saw where I’d been watching with my naked eyes that day, and cried, and my young children didn’t really understand.
Now they do. Their 18yo cousin in Jerusalem describes cowering in the dormitory stairwell (now regularly, but at first she was petrified) (she’s probably still petrified by sirens, but swiftly taking shelter is being integrated as practice); describes feeling jealous of those who have bomb shelters, because the stairwell feels inadequate. We’ve lost acquaintances. We’ve chased the tail that forms behind the comet of these war stories... that leads to World War III and hope the comet dies or changes course before hitting our earth, our soil.
Inherited continuances...
Touching someone’s scars... Is war an heritable disease?
Jane, this is magnificent, bristling with sensory detail that brings you, your parents and their world to the table where I sit with my coffee. The chewed fish bones, the bombed house like a peeled-open can of sardines... I could go on.
My Jewish grandparents survived pogroms in their native Russia. They didn’t speak of the atrocities they must have witnessed. My grandmother had been raped by a cossack at age nine, but she made light of it. Resilience was a point of pride for her, as it was for your parents. The only difference between those who rampaged through her shtetl and those who slaughtered innocents for Hitler and Hamas is weaponry. Your piece leaves me wondering about the impact of her trauma on my mother. Much has been said, and rightly, about the burdens carried by children of Holocaust survivors. Pogroms were the precursor.
Thank you for your wonderful essay! I was born right after the war on the other side, in a small Austrian town on the Swiss border. No bombs, but men at war, lost sons, the ones that came back broken. My father, who barely made it out of the hell of Stalingrad towards the end of the war due to an injury and made it home on foot (I don’t know how that was humanly possible, injured, without food and protection). Nevertheless, he only ever talked about his early years as a soldier (he was barely 18 when he was drafted) in France and then Italy, getting to know the cultures that obviously broadened his provincial mind. He and his stories instilled in me a curiosity about those countries, I just had to go and live there and study Romance languages. Hardly a word from him about the horrors of the battle of Stalingrad, I only knew that he lost his left kidney there. (He died at 54 after a year long battle with high blood pressure and dialysis). Years later, I would develop high blood pressure myself and at 70 inexplicably lost my own left kidney to cancer. We have better medication now and I am managing quite well, still carrying his trauma forward.
I was born a few years after Iran-Iraq war ended. But my parents had experienced both the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war at a young age. There were times when they talked about "The War", but with a solemn tone (they seemed very depressed when they did so). I'm glad that my brothers and i haven't experienced such times.
My mom and my dad were British immigrants to Canada. My dad came after the war looking for employment. My mom came in 1953 as a new bride. Mom had been evacuated to Llandudno Wales at the age of 4 because of a direct hit to their London home. She remained in Wales for 10 years, returning to London UK to work as she was orphaned at that young age. Mom had a lifelong fear of dying alone. As a much loved mom & grandmother, I assured her that would never occur. Yet it did. Mom died in the 2020 COVID lockdown years when no amount of begging and pleading opened hearts and doors to the inhumanity of soulless policies. I have never forgiven myself. As I write, I weep. I crawled into bed with my dad in his last hours, held him, sang softly and promised to care for his beloved Shirley. I mourn his absence in my life, but it hasn’t created this deep, jagged wound that I can’t allow a scar to form over and heal somewhat. Thank you for your words that chart so much of my mom’s experience. I can’t tell her that now, at 69, I understand her pain when I was in my hot headed anti-war protest years. I can’t tell her that now I understand what I would fight to protect. I can’t tell her that I’m sorry that I didn’t have superhero skills to scale walls to be at her bedside when she died. So much I can’t tell her, but your words create a tiny crack that lets me see that like mom and because of her, I live a life with a huge, welcoming heart and that in our 65 years together, she felt that love. 🙏
Oct 19, 2023·edited Oct 19, 2023Liked by Jane Ratcliffe
Thank you for your wisdom, especially at this moment ~ I could viscerally feel it all.
Intergenerational trauma reverberates in ways we know and ways yet to be known...
I’m thinking of my own family, how my grandfather was a part of the Manhattan Project, what is was like for him and for my father and grandmother to become so comfortable living under a veil of secrecy, but then unknowingly, passed on as exemplary behavior in their silence.
In some ways it feels like the opposite of your lived experience with your parents, and yet how the anxiety (and the loyalty) of what happens when I stuff everything down/keep secrets manifests in a similar way.
My childhood was filled with stories of war, just like yours. My adult life was filled with revolutions and uncertainty. In my mind, I am always packing, fleeing, seeking shelter. And often did. I am prepared for the catastrophes that my parents and grandparents lived, and got smarter negotiating my own.
Yes, generational trauma is real and has the tendency to repeat itself in future generations. My son went to war twice. Thus, his children talk about war all the time. Wouldn't peace be a fantastic thing to transmit to my great-grandchildren?
Jane, this is my first reading of your work. I'm transfixed and my eyes won't stop leaking. My parents are in their mid 80s. My father was eight years old when the war ended. He was in Scotland and he's more or less safe. My mother was marched through the Burmese jungle to an internment camp with her mother and seven siblings. Her mother left when she was five. She will never be entirely safe. And neither, I now understand, will I. Thank you for this insight into your life and the lives so many of us. Sending love and thanks.
“Tell personal stories which have universal complexity” - an advice from "Thoughts on: Storytelling", the previous post on "Beyond".
This is such a story, riveting and resonating. It resonates deeply with me.
My parents survived the Second World War in Poland, and they never could come back to the homes of their childhood. Both of them died when I was still a child, so I had no opportunity to listen to their stories, but I can discern this hypervigilance, not justified by my own distresses, in my behaviour throughout all my life.
Not only a great story, but beautifully written, too.
Today's wars are breaking the lives of the current and future generations. Children of survivors will inherit the concealed burden, and carry it, like a shadow, throughout their lives.
It's also personally relatable. My parents were in the war, my father in the Fleet Air Arm on an aircraft carrier, and my mother in the ATS.
I was born in Cumberland in 1951 with a ration card. Shortly afterwards, we moved to bomb damaged Portsmouth. I moved to New Jersey in 1985. I was there for 9/11. I've written about that experience.
My parents didn't like to talk about the war. I was in Powell's books in Portland this weekend and chanced across a book on British aircraft carriers. I read the two-page list of the action HMS Illustrious faced. I had no idea.
Dani Shapiro in Goodbye to all That: "On weekend trips into the city, you’d watch from the backseat of your parents’ car for the line in the Lincoln Tunnel that divided New Jersey from New York, because you felt dead on one side, and alive on the other."
And you were safe on one side, and not on the other. Same line, different time.
I'd never considered myself as a repository of my parents' trauma. Thank you.
I shared a portion that caught my heart. The part about if you tell your dad something, good, bad, or indifferent, he will immediately take it to the worst case scenario and fix the problem.
Thank you Jane- your words put together a sense of my reality, too- “When you were in utero, you gestated in her cortisol pool. As a result, your nerves have less insulation. Not literally—just that you have a hypervigilance not founded within your own traumas.” “My nervous system always alert. I was unnecessarily aware of my surroundings during my childhood.” “The flip side is that I’m intensely loyal. Which is also a trait of the war, as no one could have made it through without community.
Was there a war? No but there was -The Depression- the alcoholism, the poverty, the infant and dog who died in the house fire and one given up for adoption all before i was born. Her father survived the war. His dream was livin on “easy
Wow. A compelling read. My mom lived through WW2 in the northeast region of France that's called Lorraine (thus my name), where she witnessed some severe trauma but was not directly harmed herself. Like you, I didn't think about her trauma nor intergenerational trauma until much later... There's a lot for me to ponder in your text. Thank you for sharing that!
I read every word. The phrase “inherited continuations” struck me. I nodded “yes” to that phrase. Grandparents never spoke to me of the Holocaust--I just know factoids, not stories. I saw numbers tattooed on arms. I heard and absorbed stories from many survivors who weren’t my grandparents. I honored their silence, and reluctantly accept my dad’s same seven or eleven tales he’s willing to tell. He doesn’t realize I recognize his scripts as armor--he thinks he’s inviting closeness telling the same stories with the same words on various occasions. I see them as rehearsed social dances and gave up plumbing his depths. I got as far as I’ll get. He’s let me know by refusing to elaborate on any aspect of his scripts. So, I love and cherish the scripts, for they relay his body of wisdom. Maybe he’s shielding us as well as himself. Yes, I think the refusal to reveal new layers is also passed down, and is an act of love--of shielding us from the wars they lived through.
I remained in Manhattan during and beyond 9/11, suffered nightmares we were under attack for a year, and still bristle when it’s brought up. We brought our daughters to the top of Freedom Tower and from the window I saw where I’d been watching with my naked eyes that day, and cried, and my young children didn’t really understand.
Now they do. Their 18yo cousin in Jerusalem describes cowering in the dormitory stairwell (now regularly, but at first she was petrified) (she’s probably still petrified by sirens, but swiftly taking shelter is being integrated as practice); describes feeling jealous of those who have bomb shelters, because the stairwell feels inadequate. We’ve lost acquaintances. We’ve chased the tail that forms behind the comet of these war stories... that leads to World War III and hope the comet dies or changes course before hitting our earth, our soil.
Inherited continuances...
Touching someone’s scars... Is war an heritable disease?
Ugh it’s 7am and I’ve been up since 4am.
Jane, this is magnificent, bristling with sensory detail that brings you, your parents and their world to the table where I sit with my coffee. The chewed fish bones, the bombed house like a peeled-open can of sardines... I could go on.
My Jewish grandparents survived pogroms in their native Russia. They didn’t speak of the atrocities they must have witnessed. My grandmother had been raped by a cossack at age nine, but she made light of it. Resilience was a point of pride for her, as it was for your parents. The only difference between those who rampaged through her shtetl and those who slaughtered innocents for Hitler and Hamas is weaponry. Your piece leaves me wondering about the impact of her trauma on my mother. Much has been said, and rightly, about the burdens carried by children of Holocaust survivors. Pogroms were the precursor.
Thank you for your wonderful essay! I was born right after the war on the other side, in a small Austrian town on the Swiss border. No bombs, but men at war, lost sons, the ones that came back broken. My father, who barely made it out of the hell of Stalingrad towards the end of the war due to an injury and made it home on foot (I don’t know how that was humanly possible, injured, without food and protection). Nevertheless, he only ever talked about his early years as a soldier (he was barely 18 when he was drafted) in France and then Italy, getting to know the cultures that obviously broadened his provincial mind. He and his stories instilled in me a curiosity about those countries, I just had to go and live there and study Romance languages. Hardly a word from him about the horrors of the battle of Stalingrad, I only knew that he lost his left kidney there. (He died at 54 after a year long battle with high blood pressure and dialysis). Years later, I would develop high blood pressure myself and at 70 inexplicably lost my own left kidney to cancer. We have better medication now and I am managing quite well, still carrying his trauma forward.
A brilliant piece, thank you.
I was born a few years after Iran-Iraq war ended. But my parents had experienced both the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war at a young age. There were times when they talked about "The War", but with a solemn tone (they seemed very depressed when they did so). I'm glad that my brothers and i haven't experienced such times.
My mom and my dad were British immigrants to Canada. My dad came after the war looking for employment. My mom came in 1953 as a new bride. Mom had been evacuated to Llandudno Wales at the age of 4 because of a direct hit to their London home. She remained in Wales for 10 years, returning to London UK to work as she was orphaned at that young age. Mom had a lifelong fear of dying alone. As a much loved mom & grandmother, I assured her that would never occur. Yet it did. Mom died in the 2020 COVID lockdown years when no amount of begging and pleading opened hearts and doors to the inhumanity of soulless policies. I have never forgiven myself. As I write, I weep. I crawled into bed with my dad in his last hours, held him, sang softly and promised to care for his beloved Shirley. I mourn his absence in my life, but it hasn’t created this deep, jagged wound that I can’t allow a scar to form over and heal somewhat. Thank you for your words that chart so much of my mom’s experience. I can’t tell her that now, at 69, I understand her pain when I was in my hot headed anti-war protest years. I can’t tell her that now I understand what I would fight to protect. I can’t tell her that I’m sorry that I didn’t have superhero skills to scale walls to be at her bedside when she died. So much I can’t tell her, but your words create a tiny crack that lets me see that like mom and because of her, I live a life with a huge, welcoming heart and that in our 65 years together, she felt that love. 🙏
Thank you for your wisdom, especially at this moment ~ I could viscerally feel it all.
Intergenerational trauma reverberates in ways we know and ways yet to be known...
I’m thinking of my own family, how my grandfather was a part of the Manhattan Project, what is was like for him and for my father and grandmother to become so comfortable living under a veil of secrecy, but then unknowingly, passed on as exemplary behavior in their silence.
In some ways it feels like the opposite of your lived experience with your parents, and yet how the anxiety (and the loyalty) of what happens when I stuff everything down/keep secrets manifests in a similar way.
As always, I learn from what your writing ~
Truly stunning--
Such a moving essay. The right time to be reading this, for me at least. Thank you.
I can underwrite this.
My childhood was filled with stories of war, just like yours. My adult life was filled with revolutions and uncertainty. In my mind, I am always packing, fleeing, seeking shelter. And often did. I am prepared for the catastrophes that my parents and grandparents lived, and got smarter negotiating my own.
Yes, generational trauma is real and has the tendency to repeat itself in future generations. My son went to war twice. Thus, his children talk about war all the time. Wouldn't peace be a fantastic thing to transmit to my great-grandchildren?
Jane, this is my first reading of your work. I'm transfixed and my eyes won't stop leaking. My parents are in their mid 80s. My father was eight years old when the war ended. He was in Scotland and he's more or less safe. My mother was marched through the Burmese jungle to an internment camp with her mother and seven siblings. Her mother left when she was five. She will never be entirely safe. And neither, I now understand, will I. Thank you for this insight into your life and the lives so many of us. Sending love and thanks.
“Tell personal stories which have universal complexity” - an advice from "Thoughts on: Storytelling", the previous post on "Beyond".
This is such a story, riveting and resonating. It resonates deeply with me.
My parents survived the Second World War in Poland, and they never could come back to the homes of their childhood. Both of them died when I was still a child, so I had no opportunity to listen to their stories, but I can discern this hypervigilance, not justified by my own distresses, in my behaviour throughout all my life.
Not only a great story, but beautifully written, too.
Today's wars are breaking the lives of the current and future generations. Children of survivors will inherit the concealed burden, and carry it, like a shadow, throughout their lives.
This is great, Jane. Wonderful writing.
It's also personally relatable. My parents were in the war, my father in the Fleet Air Arm on an aircraft carrier, and my mother in the ATS.
I was born in Cumberland in 1951 with a ration card. Shortly afterwards, we moved to bomb damaged Portsmouth. I moved to New Jersey in 1985. I was there for 9/11. I've written about that experience.
My parents didn't like to talk about the war. I was in Powell's books in Portland this weekend and chanced across a book on British aircraft carriers. I read the two-page list of the action HMS Illustrious faced. I had no idea.
Dani Shapiro in Goodbye to all That: "On weekend trips into the city, you’d watch from the backseat of your parents’ car for the line in the Lincoln Tunnel that divided New Jersey from New York, because you felt dead on one side, and alive on the other."
And you were safe on one side, and not on the other. Same line, different time.
I'd never considered myself as a repository of my parents' trauma. Thank you.
I shared a portion that caught my heart. The part about if you tell your dad something, good, bad, or indifferent, he will immediately take it to the worst case scenario and fix the problem.
You had a good dad. I want to be more like him.
Thank you Jane- your words put together a sense of my reality, too- “When you were in utero, you gestated in her cortisol pool. As a result, your nerves have less insulation. Not literally—just that you have a hypervigilance not founded within your own traumas.” “My nervous system always alert. I was unnecessarily aware of my surroundings during my childhood.” “The flip side is that I’m intensely loyal. Which is also a trait of the war, as no one could have made it through without community.
Was there a war? No but there was -The Depression- the alcoholism, the poverty, the infant and dog who died in the house fire and one given up for adoption all before i was born. Her father survived the war. His dream was livin on “easy
street.” Having fun yet? They all tried.
Wow. A compelling read. My mom lived through WW2 in the northeast region of France that's called Lorraine (thus my name), where she witnessed some severe trauma but was not directly harmed herself. Like you, I didn't think about her trauma nor intergenerational trauma until much later... There's a lot for me to ponder in your text. Thank you for sharing that!