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Mother and Son Conflicts with Trauma in Family History

User Profile: crimsonSouth5954
crimsonSouth5954 January 11th

Hello everyone, 

I feel fortunate to have found a place to post this, and hope my approach works with your site. 

Background (I'll keep it pretty general -- trigger warnings: suicide, disability, Loss): 

My mother was raised by a wonderful and amazingly talented (skier on an olympic team) bi-polar woman: my biological grandmother. She never quite got what she wanted from life, they grew up poor and in a very small space with my uncle, younger sibling, but my grandmother always had dinner there, and kept the place clean and tidy (trust me, I've been told, re: my own poor judgement in decorating and upkeep etc. -- more on that shortly -- and my apologies if that sounds catty, I mean it as a small comical jab at each of us). 

My grandmother was eventually diagnosed with either one or several debilitating conditions, almost guaranteeing she would become disabled to a degree that would leave her in pain and misery (especially considering her physical prowess in sports etc). She would take her own life by leaving the car on in her garage, a fairly common approach, round about when my mother was 30. She was found, to the best of my recollection, by my uncle, my mother's younger brother. 

My uncle was also a mountaineer and skier and pilot, and slept 4 hours a night, and ran a massive garden, owned his own mini-airline, climbed the Matterhorn (pretty sure, hard to tell with that side of the family -- Swiss, exhausting lol). 

One day he came down with a flu and was taking a shower and got dizzy. He fell and hit one of his 4-6 vertebrae in just such a way that the swelling caused him to become paraplegic. There is almost no person I could think of who I've known in my life that this could have been more devastating too, and that's saying something, because obviously it's devastating no matter whom or how. He would eventually elect to take his own life, being in a place where that was an option. Thank god that was an option. Rest in peace. 

So, all of that in mind, I have to ask the general community, re: my mother and her trauma, and me and my sister with the inherited trauma etc. (I do realize these are common things, but that particular arc is just the tip of the iceberg in some ways): what approaches, almost at the larger familial level or group work, or just tactics and useful approaches have any of y'all found when it comes to things that go form one generation to the next. And, although this one is a bit specific in some ways (matching suicides, or some kind of apparent mirror image thing?), events that seem to keep happening, or like our family has a "curse"? 

I apologize if this is going into a trauma dumping thing, but I guess I had to at least put the basics out there, somewhere other than occasional personal writings I do or monologues. It's been an uphill battle to get control of some of my emotions such that I could even entertain the idea of writing this anywhere public. I thank you for anything, even if it's nothing or a "hey post this elsewhere ***" -- Take care everyone and I hope to contribute to the community, should that be something that works etc. All best, Anonymous Fella


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User Profile: toughTiger6481
toughTiger6481 January 13th

@crimsonSouth5954

                     While it sounds like a double dose of deaths in your family ...... what you have described sounds like a family honest with themselves about how devastating the diagnosis would be to athletic people.  Someone who could not see themselves wasting away dependent on others for care.    I do not think it is a curse on your family. 

       I think many have not ever had to face this type of situation. Most suicide only want to end what they see as an unacceptable future.   They may not take into consideration those left behind.