u/Striking-Finding-246

Still taking free space in my head.

Unpacking trauma is difficult, but I need to say this plainly: my mother was extremely abusive throughout my childhood. We lived in deep poverty. Walmart felt like a luxury. Most of my clothes came from charities or dollar stores, and many nights I went to bed hungry. I was 5'9" and only 85 pounds, painfully underweight and constantly malnourished.

While I struggled to find enough to eat, my parents regularly bought expensive food for themselves, like cases of king crab legs by the case. I learned to survive however I could, hunting bullfrogs for protein and growing vegetables in a neighbor’s hay field. As a child, I had to figure out how to feed myself.

My mother’s violence often left bruises all over my body. My father, a Vietnam-era veteran with diabetes and a blood clot filter in his neck, was also a target during domestic violence in our home. Child Protective Services was involved so often that they were on a first-name basis in our household. I still remember belt marks across my face and chest, only to be told by a CPS worker that my parents were allowed to punish me and were considered “fit.” Today, those experiences would clearly be recognized as child abuse.

As an adult, I came to understand that the chaos and harm did not end with my childhood. My mother had searched online for poisons she could potentially use on my father. When confronted, she denied everything. Around the same time, she began inserting herself into my marriage in disturbing ways, sending money to my now ex-wife, encouraging her to leave me, and even mailing her personal items including underwear, as a way to create emotional attachment. My mother was deeply unwell, but that does not excuse the damage she caused or the betrayal of crossing boundaries no parent should ever cross. My ex-wife accepted the money without telling me rather than returning it.

She consistently sent my ex-wife large amounts of money while continuing to undermine me in every way possible, even encouraging fear and hostility toward me. She sent pepper spray to my ex-wife to use against me and coached her on what to say to police officers in an attempt to have me charged with crimes that would be difficult to defend against. Unsurprisingly, that marriage eventually collapsed. After years of therapy and learning where to draw boundaries, I made the decision to cut ties with my family completely.

My father passed away in 2012 at the age of 69, as did my older sister at the age of 30. I have not physically seen my mother since those funerals. Yet even from a distance, it often felt as though she remained behind the scenes, influencing parts of my life I could not fully escape, including the relationship with my daughter from my previous marriage. Whom my ex-wife called, "little Linda".

I have paid child support as required, but my parenting time was repeatedly denied. In order to enforce parenting time, someone must be served and brought to court. The courts where I live never allowed service by publication, even though my ex-wife moved more than twenty times, likely with help from my mother. After years of fighting, I reached a painful conclusion: the emotional cost was greater than what I had left to give. My daughter has been alienated from me for over fifteen years, and I no longer know what a future parent-child relationship with her would look like. Nor do I give it the energy to care anymore.

Despite all of that loss, my life did not end there. I met my current wife, and together we built a family with three beautiful children. My mother has never met them, and she knows nothing about their lives. They are protected from that history. I no longer carry my father’s last name, and neither do my children. We are a beautiful family, and we have never had the kind of chaos or violence in our home that I grew up with.

In our home, we have a saying: “You are either a product of your environment, or you are a product of your environment.” The difference is in what you choose to do with what shaped you. Some people believe that because something was good enough for them, it will be good enough for their children. Others decide the cycle ends with them.

For me, it ends here; there will not be generational trauma.

My children have never known hunger. They have closets full of clothes and shoes, more than I ever had in my entire childhood. They know safety, stability, and love. Sometimes they ask about my childhood, and I tell them only what they need to know: that I grew up poor and abused, and that I chose differently for them. They are fascinated that their dad knows how to fix almost anything, hunt, garden, and survive. I do not want them carrying the weight of stories they never needed to inherit. Protecting their childhood is part of breaking the cycle.

Generational trauma is not something I will hand down. My parents do not live through stories in my household. There are no family legends or heroic narratives, only the truth that I came from hardship and chose another path.

I was raised believing that every man in our family had to serve in the military, a tradition that stretched back to the American Civil War. I followed that path myself and served as an Army sniper. I carry personal struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder. My children will not be expected to follow in my footsteps. I have already paid for their futures with hard work, sacrifice, and years of labor so they can choose their own direction.

Sometimes I wonder who I would have become if I had been raised by parents like the one I strive to be. I know I would not be the same person. I became guarded, calculating, and fiercely protective because survival demanded it. I carry those traits with me still. My hands remain dirty so that their lives can be clean.

And somewhere deep inside, there remains a part of me that hopes my mother could truly understand the pain she caused, that she could feel even a fraction of what it was like to live as a terrified child under her control. I pray for her. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, Romans 12:19. Not for revenge, but for acknowledgment. For understanding. For the simple truth of what happened to finally matter.