by Sylvie Rouhani | Mar 8, 2023 | ACEs, Complex PTSD Healing, Guest Contributor, Sexual Abuse
The recent news of David Carrick’s arrest sheds light on why it is so difficult for victims and survivors of violence and rape to disclose abuse. We are encouraged to call the Police but, very often, we aren’t believed or heard, even worse: some of us...
by Shigeko Ito | Mar 7, 2023 | ACEs, Anxiety, Attachment Trauma, CPTSD, CPTSD Survivor Stories, Generational Trauma, Guest Contributor
Growing up in Japan with a workaholic surgeon father, an often-absent socialite mother, and two older brothers who were seldom around, I was mostly raised by a revolving door of caregivers. This unstable home environment likely made me a melancholic, anxious child...
by Madelon Wise | Mar 3, 2023 | ACEs, CPTSD, CPTSD Survivor Stories, Family Estrangement, Grief, Guest Contributor
Mom died in July 1960 at the age of 42 when I was 9 years old. My father remarried a year later. They said that it was a heart attack. Later in life, my oldest brother, Mike, and I would speculate for hours on end over glasses of wine about whether she had taken her...
by Madelon Wise | Feb 15, 2023 | ACEs, CPTSD, Gaslighting, Generational Trauma
I spent the summer of 1963 at my Aunt Sue’s house across the bay from San Francisco. It wasn’t clear to me nor is it now, exactly how Aunt Sue and I were related, but I know that her dead husband shared a name with my maternal grandfather. She was childless, and...
by Madelon Wise | Jan 25, 2023 | ACEs, Attachment Trauma, Guest Contributor
The long, low white 4-bedroom house crouched in wait on a big corner lot shaded by silver maple trees. I can still see the kitchen, the dining room, my bedroom, and the patio outside where I spent so much time. I can picture the television and its rabbit ears in the...
by Madelon Wise | Jan 17, 2023 | ACEs, CPTSD Survivor Stories, Guest Contributor
My brother, Mike, was 8 years older than I, and he could remember when we were a happy family. It was as though he had grown up in a different family than I had. I remember nothing but screaming, fighting, and terror. My mother was a binge drinker, and she and my...
