"What Happened to You?"

My next series of posts are about how what we experienced in childhood shapes who we are. The first book that I finished reading this Summer was “What Happened to You?” Oprah and Dr. Perry write about how trauma and more specifically childhood trauma affects our brains throughout our lives. They teach through talking about the science, personal stories, stories of people that appeared on The Oprah Show and through people that Dr. Perry has worked with. What happened to us as children affected our brains, how we see the world and how we see ourselves. It turns out that trauma occurring as early as in the first two months of life can be more devastating than trauma that occurs later in the child's life or trauma that happens when we are adults. Staying in an abusive relationship until the kids get older is more harmful than helpful. If you both can get help and be better parents great, but if not, children are significantly affected not only as they get further along in childhood but some still struggle into adulthood. There are also generational impacts. How do you respond to stress? Do you shut down, do you yell, do you throw things, do you have to leave, do you hit things or people? Do you reach for comfort food? Eating causes the brain to release endorphins. Endorphins are called "feel good" chemicals. Certain foods release more endorphins than others. Can you guess which foods? I'll give you a hint, it is not carrots. Some of us were beaten as children and told that it was somehow related to love. I know that as a child, the beatings that I got didn't make me behave. Sometimes I acted out because I wanted attention or because I was angry. Oprah and Dr. Perry talk about the fact that neglect and trauma go hand in hand. Being immigrants, my parents worked a lot to try to make a way for us. I was the youngest. I was 7 when we came to the United States. I was taken away from my support system. I didn’t understand why my parents had to be away so much and why my sisters and I were now mostly alone without seeing our grandmothers, aunts, uncles and cousins as much as we were used to. Our parents and caregivers mostly did what was done to them. Some thought that they were doing the right thing, but some were abusive. It has set some of us up to have a warped sense of love, to smile when we are in pain and to try to please others even when they are hurting us or we are hurting ourselves. Some of us don't want to talk about what happened to us because of a feeling of shame that is attached to it. The shame should not be in what happened to you that you did not have control of, the shame would be if you don't deal with the issues that stemmed from it and do not live the life you were intended to live. I was able to make peace with what happened to me when I looked back at what happened to my parents. If we hope to have forgiveness from those that we have hurt, we have to extend that grace to those that hurt us. You might not be able to have a current relationship with them but you can come to peace within yourself so that you can heal. This book will help you understand yourself and others better. I hope it will impact you as much as it has me. We have some work to do. Our peace and happiness depend on it.