Congratulations, Your Life is Perfect
By: Mary Gallagher
Tags: Trauma, Reconciliation, Christianity, Family, Abuse

When I published the story of my father’s shattered childhood, my cousins and even my best friend replied, “I never knew.”

I am reminded of the popular sentiment that circulates on social media: Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about: Be kind.

That’s the way it is with family secrets and brokenness. I didn’t know either, until one day when I was in my early thirties my father decided to tell his life story. It was at the dinner table after a New Year’s Day meal.

I squeezed my little son closer to my heart as I listened to the horror that was my father’s childhood. A story of abandonment, sorrow, and abuse.

For days I reeled with the truth of what my father's life had been like as a child and how it had shaped who he was as the man I knew — or never really knew. I was consumed with a small picture I had of him as a boy — now I saw the sorrow in his eyes, now I saw the broken boy that stilled lived inside the man.

I called my mom and asked for more details, angry that I had not known these things about my father.

But, I railed at her, I could have understood him better. I could have seen his harshness as a reflection of his own hurt and shame. Maybe I would have been able to love him better. Why didn't you tell me?

I am reminded of the popular sentiment that circulates on social media: Everyone is fighting a battle you know nothing about: Be kind.

My father’s wounds shaped my life too. His broken spirit leaked into me as sure as a pile of grease soaks everything it comes into contact with. Not willingly or knowingly, he passed down shame, sorrow, and elements of an abused and orphaned spirit. My father never abused me but the empty places in his heart left holes in mine too.

Genetic research and science now show us that trauma changes us, not just emotionally, but literally changes our DNA. These changes, the trauma, can be passed down to our children. We are the result of all that our parents were at the time of conception.

This truth is mind-blowing to me but it has helped me understand my place in the lineage of trauma and pain. And it has helped me undo some of it and learn to walk differently. It’s also opened my eyes to understand those people groups who seem stuck, unable to walk out of poverty, generational abuse, and hopelessness.

I now see that the trauma of genocide and generational poverty and despair shapes the lives of those who enter the world even generations after the wrongs have taken place.

My father never abused me but the empty places in his heart left holes in mine too.

The past is in the past, or is it?

I posted something on Facebook about the broken Indian treaties left in the wake of the United States’ quest for land. I was subsequently harassed by a Facebook “friend” who accused me of using the post as a divisive and political tactic.

A little searching of my writings would have enlightened her to the truth that I am not seeking a divisive platform but rather an inclusive, a let’s-sit-at-the-table-and-talk place for all.

Her ensuing comments reflected an attitude that I can only, for lack of a better term, call ignorant. “The past is the past,” she said, “and why can’t we all just move on?”

Her defense also included this statement: “Most white settlers were nice people.” To which I will sort of agree but we’re not talking about the intent of the settlers and settlers were not hired by the government to kill native Americans.

The government of the United States (Canada too), compelled by greed, power, and the misdirected belief in “manifest destiny” orchestrated the murder of Indians, the stealing of land, the desecration of spiritual lands and burial grounds, and the destruction of the buffalo — thereby indirectly killing thousands of Indians and their way of life.

I replied, “It is easy for you to say that the past is the past.” For many, the past is their present reality and moving on — well, if there were a path for them to move onto I am sure they would.

I have been burdened by this callousness that speaks to an unwillingness of some to get their hands dirty, an inability to sit with the weakest of society. What saddens me further, almost to the edge of anger, is that these “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” proponents are self-proclaiming Christians.

I am not here to bash Christians because I still consider myself a follower of Christ, but I have come to look not on what one calls themselves or where they park their butt on Sunday morning for an hour, but rather on how they treat those who cannot repay them, how they respond to the cries of injustice, or how they use their words and freedom of expression to negate the pain and brokenness around them.

Congratulations, former Facebook friend, your life is perfect

But for many in the USA and Canada, it is still not. It is a cycle of pain, poverty, addiction, and abuse. Suffering and setbacks that cannot be overcome with a dismissive swipe of the hand that says “the past is the past — move on”.

I’d like for that former Facebook friend to say “the past is the past” to the Navajo mother who has no running water to wash her hands and dishes or to give her baby a bath.

I’d like her to tell that to the little girl in the ghetto whose mother is addicted to drugs and whose father is in prison for life for a minor, non-violent crime because he was caught in the political war on drugs.

I wonder if she’d be willing to cast this unhelpful phrase into the lap of the son whose father was sexually abused in a residential school in Canada. A common practice sanctified by the Canadian government, native children were ripped from their families and forced to assimilate in church-run schools where they were starved and abused hundreds of miles from home. The last residential school closed in 1998.

If she listened to the stories, sat with the tear-stained faces, and heard the unspoken despair, would she still be so callous?

Generational trauma

These are examples of generational trauma that influences families and our society endlessly until the cycles are broken. It must be nice to be able to say, “The past is the past.”

I wish my father had been able to snap his fingers and say that about the nightmares he experienced as he relived Catholic priests raping him.

I have no doubt he would have loved to wipe away the deep, throbbing pain he must have felt everyday living in abusive foster homes while his mother slept soundly under the roof of a home she established with a new family.

I find it impossible to imagine the image of Jesus swiping his hand in the air and exclaiming, “The past is the past — won’t you just move on?” without offering the tools for moving forward: compassion, understanding, grace, mercy, reconciliation, healing, empowerment — all of which he showered on those he interacted with on earth.

To my former Facebook friend, I say, Congratulations, your life has been perfect. But I ask, why not be Christlike with this incredible gift and respond as Christ would?