When Home Hurts
Photography by Marie Maroun
Interview by Jennifer Cooper
Growing up, Marilyn* knew something wasn’t right with her family. She was six years old the first time she noticed it. She had a friend over and the two of them were playing in the front yard on a warm afternoon.
They were playing rather happily when she started hearing her mom scream at her older sister. Marilyn says, “It was clear as a bell because all the windows were open. And there I was with my little Barbies, pretending I couldn’t hear a thing even though I knew my friend could hear it too.”
By age 10, Marilyn was already crafting her future exit strategy while her sister began running away from home. The experience of growing up in a chaotic home was traumatic for Marilyn, a little kid who just wanted to feel safe and loved.
We all know the saying home is where the heart is, but what does it mean when the heart is hurting?
In the prologue to The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. writes:
Trauma happens to us, our friends, our families, and our neighbors. Research by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has shown that one in five Americans was sexually molested as a child; one in four was beaten by a parent to the point of a mark being left on their body; and one in three couples engages in physical violence. A quarter of us grew up with alcoholic relatives, and one out of eight witnessed their mother being beaten or hit.
But clinical psychotherapist Heidi Waltos says there is a form of abuse that many of us don’t acknowledge, yet can be the most damaging of all: not being seen for who you are.
That’s something Marilyn knows about. Now in her 50s, she thinks back to those years of living at home with a dad who was an alcoholic and a mother who was controlling.
Marilyn explains, “My mom, because of her own crappy childhood in which she never felt loved, always felt like she had to win people over. That included my sister and me. Rather than loving us for who we were, it was always about who we should be for her.”
Waltos says that kind of experience can have a massive impact. “The message it sends is that you don’t matter in life.” And that’s challenging to overcome, because as Waltos explains, “You begin to think there’s something wrong with you versus something happened to you.”
“When negative things happen in a family, a healthy family will talk about them.”
For children—especially sensitive kids—this can become a tenacious and stubborn thought.
Data suggests that about fifteen to twenty percent of kids are born with nervous systems that are hardwired for lighting-quick reactions. It can be reactions to physical things like lights or sounds. They can also be highly perceptive of the moods of others.
Basically, these kids can read an environment in greater depth both because they take in more information and process it faster. These children are labeled sensitive.
Waltos likens them to the classic canary in the coal mine. They are the first to notice when something is wrong or is dangerous. But the real challenge comes not in noticing that the air is bad, but in recognizing no one is willing to talk about it.
“When negative things happen in a family, a healthy family will talk about them and handle their stuff,” Waltos says. So when a sensitive child who is in a dysfunctional family brings up something they see or hear that’s hurtful, Waltos says they get labeled as troublemakers. “Families don’t like talking about it, so they end up shunning their child. But those little kids are the real heroes.”
As we know, shunning is a painful experience that tears a family apart.
So how can those sensitive kids grow up to feel at home expressing their authentic selves? They need to go back to see their previous experiences through fresh eyes.
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That’s one of the things Marilyn did. She recognized that her parents grew up in what she describes as horrible homes during great turmoil across Eastern Europe. “They were fleeing Russians by horse and wagon. There was a lot of chaos and disruption,” she explains. Her father lost his dad when he was child, and her mother, Marilyn says, “She could never live up to her mother’s expectations.”
Marilyn’s parents didn’t grow up feeling loved or learning how to love. And that’s something she has deep empathy for. Yet Marilyn acknowledges, “It still doesn’t make what they did okay. But I can see now that my mom just desperately wanted her own community and close friends but didn’t know how to have them.”
Acknowledging the trauma in family roots is one step; however, it doesn’t end there. You have to go further, to what Waltos likens to the hero's journey. You have to visit the dark places, but then you have to move forward.
“You have to visit the dark places, but then you have to move forward.”
Moving forward is the hardest part of the journey. It’s also the most important. “There’s an unconscious belief that if you stay in that place, you can fix the trauma,” says Waltos. However, it seems as though you can’t.
Sigmund Freud thought that the compulsion to repeat or revisit painful experiences allowed us to practice mastery. We think that if only we could have changed the fact that X said Y, or done Z, we’d be whole. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
Our brains are excellent at memorizing traumatic experiences, and if you’re in the experience rather than outside as an observer, your body actually experiences the pain as if it were physically happening again. The heart rate quickens, the body releases stress hormones, and you can find yourself in a state of fight, flight, or freeze just by thinking about it, leaving you in a cycle of self-hate and pain.
So in order to create a healthy home, you first need to find safety in your own body. Basically, you need to teach your body that the danger has passed.
For some this means therapy like Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), yoga, breathwork, and/or meditation. Others find healing in groups or with a mentor—someone who can both teach and double as a partner to practice new skills with.
Some of these have barriers to access. It could be money or cultural stigma or awareness. And while there are whole conversations to be had about how we can reduce those barriers, thankfully there are some resources that are free or low cost.
You can start by taking the ACE quiz. It will assess your own Adverse Childhood Experiences. Then books like The Body Keeps the Score are helpful to understand trauma’s effects and what can be done to restore a feeling of safe haven in our own bodies. Waltos also recommends Stanford Neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Huberman’s YouTube videos. They can help you understand how to retrain your brain.
Marilyn found her way home through books, therapy, and finding a partner who grew up in a healthy family. He helped normalize what a healthy family could look like.
“I want this to be a place where she can be who she is. If she can launch knowing that she’s well-loved for who she is, I feel like my legacy would be changing the trajectory of the generations that follow.”
Today, Marilyn shares a loving home with her husband and daughter. Ending the trauma cycle not only helped Marilyn, it’s also helping future generations, starting with her daughter.
“I want this to be a place where she can be who she is, a place where she can feel well-loved. If she can launch knowing that she’s well-loved for who she is, I feel like my legacy would be changing the trajectory of the generations that follow.”
Things have changed for Marilyn and she knows it. “Our moms often looked to us for what they didn’t get. And you can’t do that with your kids. You got to deal with your shit. Kids aren’t there to meet your needs. They’re there to just be a kid.”
And those kids deserve a safe and loving place to call home. Everyone does.
*Name has been changed to protect the subject’s identity and to preserve the relationship Marilyn has worked to have with her parents.
Additional editing provided by Kathy Cornwell.
This is part of our ongoing home series. Click here for meditations, insights, and the shifting nature of home—what we grew up thinking home meant, what we think it is now, and how we find it in ourselves.
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