Severe trauma can persist like a scene in a movie that  plays over and over in our minds. When someone experiences a life-threatening traumatic event, the rational, prefrontal cortex part of the brain temporarily shuts down. The amygdala, responsible for regulating emotions, reacts to release cortisol and adrenaline in the body. Extra oxygen is sent to the brain and the person is in a higher state of alert for survival but afterwards may have difficulty remembering the details. Sensory fragments from the trauma are stored in the amygdala through visual images, sound, touch, smell, or taste. The lack of cognitive processing during the event makes it difficult to discriminate between threatening and normal circumstances later in life. Long-term trauma, or post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD) is when the effects on the brain are permanent and the victim suffers from persistent feelings of anxiety and depression. Writing about trauma is an opportunity to gain perspective of the situation and regain control of our lives.

Not only is it psychologically difficult to confront trauma, but it can linger in the subconscious for years before the victim is able to speak about it. In Cathy Caruth’s study on trauma and memory, she points out that it is not so much about forgetting, but rather the victims cannot fully comprehend the situation at the time it occurs. There is an inherent delay in the ability to witness the event at the cost of witnessing oneself. The trauma can resurface in the form of flashbacks or dreams in another place, and in another time, when similar physical or emotional sensations are triggered. [1]

In my life, I experienced trauma the night my father killed my mother in our Bronx apartment, but I have little memory of it. It happened a couple of weeks before my third birthday, which is a young age to remember most events. The image of blue flashing lights of a police car has forever haunted me, but the events that took place before the police arrived were unclear for many years. I recall sitting on a policeman’s lap with my sister Claire in the front seat of the police car, watching and listening to the drumbeat of rain pounding on the windshield. I can visualize myself crying frantically in a white room full of cribs when they separated me from my sister later that night. In the morning, I recall two nuns in white habits brought me a glass of orange juice while I stood in the crib trying to get out. Eventually, I began puzzling other images together from stories relatives shared with me. 

Interviews with Holocaust survivors revealed they were unable to speak of the inhumanity they’d witnessed until decades later yet were haunted by images throughout their lives that they could not explain. During one interview, a women survivor shared recurrent flashbacks of trains, but hadn’t remembered the trains that passed by the children’s barracks until another survivor reminded her [Caruth 6]. The “not telling” as time passes perpetuates the secrecy and tyranny that the event has over the victim, allowing the perpetrators to often remain unaccountable. The longer the story remains untold, the more distorted it becomes, and the survivor begins to doubt the reality of the actual event [Caruth 64]. To gain clarity regarding the fragmented images of the trauma in my childhood, I decided to write a memoir.

Writing a memoir provides the opportunity not only for others to witness the experience but to transform the experience into wisdom, and in the case of trauma, to heal. Vivian Gornick differentiates between writing details of the situation—the memories and events which create our lives—and the story [2]. The story is the emotional experience, or the takeaway, from the situations presented in life. As a child, I was told my mother died in a car accident, and I conveniently fit this narrative into the scene with blue flashing lights. A few months before my seventeenth birthday, I learned from my aunt and uncle that my father had strangled her. It was not until almost a decade later that I began to ask questions. What I wanted not to be true was only hurting me further. I needed to find answers. The more I learned, the more other memories surfaced. By reconstructing the details, I was able to recall the trauma of seeing my mother lying on the floor with the jump rope around her neck. It is that image, which I suppressed for many years, that has affected me in my personal relationships, especially in my marriage and with my two children. Metaphorically, it has strangled me into a nullifying silence when I experience tension. Unresolved conflict creates a choking sensation around my neck, and I cannot speak. It is the words, “Mommy, Mommy, wake up,” I can hear now that never got resolved then.

In narrative memoir, the narrator takes on the first-person persona and is both the writer and protagonist of the story. In memoirs centered around trauma, rooting out the details demands a painful inquiry into the subconscious memory which often retriggers the trauma. It is a process most people understandably want to avoid, but the reward of gaining a new perspective and psychological control of their own lives is worth the struggle. The tyrannical hold of the trauma is lessened and allows the possibility of experiencing the discomfort but without fear. As I began to process what my father did to my mother, it completely changed my view not only of him, but of myself and the family that raised me.

1. Van der Kolk, Bessel A. The Body Keeps the Score. New York: Viking, 2014.
2. Caruth, Cathy, ed. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1995.
3. Gornick, Vivian. The Situation and the Story, “The Memoir.” New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2001.