ACE's Family Revelations

Until Recently, I didn't know about the "Parenting Manuals" in use in Germany-when Adolf Hitler [and his Nazi collaborators] were children, but thanks to ACEsconnect, I learned  about Alice Miller's book ("For Your Own Good:..."). I did know about "Bavarian" method of teaching children to swim-which my grandfather used to 'teach' my mother-when she was three years old [by throwing her off a very low bridge into a shallow bay], which may explain my mother's later teaching swimming by the American Red Cross method, first as a camp counselor at a girl's summer camp-during my mother's teen years, and later when my sister and I were young, rather than the 'Bavarian' method my mother was 'taught'. Both my maternal grandparents worked as teachers here in the USA. My mother's maternal grandmother had fled Germany [actually, Mecklenberg] during the 'Purge on Midwives' [late 1860's], although she practiced midwifery here-until about the time of the Flexner report- which encouraged U.S. medical education based on the German 'Male only' medical practice model. Both my mother and her only sibling [older sister] took their own lives, in their later adulthood. I am thankful my Resilience score was about four points higher than my ACE score (ACE-6, Resilience-10), and that my parents kept a copy of Dr. Spock's parenting manual in our house. I haven't explored too much more of the 'historical /trans-generational trauma' beyond this context, although I know my father's father left my paternal grandmother with three children, to have an affair; and my father had been having 'an affair' for three years before [i witnessed] my mother's [handgun] suicide-possibly 'aided and abetted' [even though NY criminal laws prohibited it] by my [then deputy-sheriff] father. .... [my mother tried to apologize to my sister and I-for being such a 'lousy mother', the night before her suicide]. My father remarried one month and twenty days after my mother's suicide.

Kathy Heintzman posted:

I commend you on using the ACE questionnaire with your families.  While I understand the concern regarding families being prepared and guilt (the previous comment) it's simply not possible to insulate people from the pain of the truth.  Healing begins with honesty; and people are more resilient than they think.  At least this is my experience.  I benefitted from taking the ACE questionnaire followed immediately by the Resilience test.  The two together help make sense of the story of my family's suffering, and in turn enabled me to make sense of my suffering.   

It's important to remember that the ACEs research didn't get done until relatively recently (for a guy in his 60s that is recently) and some things were taken for granted.Similarly, it wasn't until fairly recently -- even more recent than the ACEs research -- that I "did the sums" about at what age my mother got pregnant with her first child (16) -- my brother -- to my father (who was probably in his 30s when he married my mum), he was a violent alcoholic, with all the DV being "behind closed doors", and hence forever unsupported, and misunderstood, by her siblings, added to her likely being sexually abused by her father -- strange how long it can take the blocks to fall into place -- my dad was a mess, my mum was a a mess, hardly surprising my brother turned out a mess -- all the symptoms and signs of Dev Trauma Disorder. My brother went to prison, and there was no one, in those days, to "tell his story". Fortunately, I was farmed out to my grandmother at a young age -- major source of my own "resilience". 

Put all that together, and life makes sense -- ACEs and resilience can help a person find self-understanding, "self-forgiveness" -- hope, and a certain degree of strength. So, I think it's well nigh essential that families, and professionals, both, to get on board with this stuff. Any "guilt" there is can only be recognised after this work is done.

I commend you on using the ACE questionnaire with your families.  While I understand the concern regarding families being prepared and guilt (the previous comment) it's simply not possible to insulate people from the pain of the truth.  Healing begins with honesty; and people are more resilient than they think.  At least this is my experience.  I benefitted from taking the ACE questionnaire followed immediately by the Resilience test.  The two together help make sense of the story of my family's suffering, and in turn enabled me to make sense of my suffering.   

Congratulations on being skilled enough to do this work. But not every "family" is so prepared -- for some members feel guilty when the relationship between high ACEs scores and suicide are pointed out, even when it's done in such a way as to address "hot issues" and needs for "intervention" with a prevention goal.