More from Brene Brown's book - "Rising Strong"...under the heading "Rumbling with Nostalgia.
"...When, I wiped the nostalgia off my history to uncover the real trauma behind many of those stories, I began to understand why we didn't talk about emotions growing up. Of all the things trauma takes away from us, the worst is our willingness, or even out ability, to be vulnerable. There's a reclaiming that has to happen."
"Sometimes, the deep love we feel for our parents or the sense of loyalty to our family often create a mythology that gets in the way of our efforts to look past the nostalgia and toward truth. We don't want to betray anyone - we don't want to be the first to get curious and ask questions or challenge the stories. We ask ourselves, How can I love and protect my family if I'm rumbling with these hard truths? For me, the answer to that questions is another question: How can I love and protect my family if I'mnot rumbling with these hard truths?"
"We know that genetics loads the gun and environment pulls the trigger. In order to teach our children about rising strong, we first need to teach them the truth about their history. I've told both my kids, "Drinking may not be the same for you as it is for your friends. Here's what you need to know and understand." I also don't frame my wild stories as war stories from "the good ole days." Yes, I have wonderful family memories and stories of crazy adventures that I love to share, but when it comes to addiction, medical histories, and mental health, I believe that nostalgia is deadly."
"Stephanie Coontz, author of The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap, puts her finger on some of the real dangers of nostalgia. She writes, "There's nothing wrong with celebrating the good things in our past. But memories, like witnesses, do not always tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. We need to cross-examine them, recognizing and accepting the inconsistencies and gaps in those that make us proud and happy as well as those that cause us pain."
"Coontz suggests that the best way to reality-check our nostalgic ideas is to uncover and examine the tradeoffs and contradictions that are often deeply buried in all our memories. As an example, Coontz writes:
"I have interviewed many white people who have found memories of their lives in the 1950s and early 1960s. The ones who never cross-examined those memories to get at the complexities were the ones most hostile to the civil rights and the women's movements, which they saw as destroying the harmonious world they remembered. But others could see that their own good experiences were in some ways dependent on unjust and social arrangements, or on bad experiences for others. Some white people recognized that their happy memories of childhood included a black housekeeper who was always available to them because she couldn't be available to her own children."
"Coontz is careful to point out that the people who rumbled with their nostalgia didn't feel guilt or shame about their good memories - instead, their digging made them more adaptable to change. She concludes, "Both as individuals and as a society, we must learn to view the past in three dimensions before we can move into the fourth dimension of the future."
"There is a line in director Paolo Sorrentino's gorgeous and haunting film The Great Beauty that illuminates the pain often underlying nostalgia. One of the main characters, a man reconciling his past while longing for love and relevance in his present life, asks, "What's wrong with feeling nostalgic? It's the only distraction left for those of us who have no faith in the future." Nostalgia can be a dangerous distraction, and it can underpin a feeling of resignation or hopelessness after a fall. In the rising strong process, looking back is done in the service of moving forward with an integrated and whole heart." Brene
When we bring up the discussion about sexual abuse in our childhoods, this is what we are up against...nostalgia - and our inability to be vulnerable, as well as being unfaithful to the love of parent and disloyal to the family.
I agree wholeheartedly with Brene - How can I love and protect my family if I'm not rumbling with these hard truths?
This is the oxymoron we are all faced with as we try and unscramble our childhood memories; those laced with sexual abuse.
We want to protect our families; while we are tearing them apart to sort out the abuse. We want to love and protect our own children...yet, as we do so, it appears we are destroying the good memories of our own family.
The exact thing can be said about religion...for most feel that their church is their extended family - my church family.
How can you love and be loyal to the church while dissecting it for abuse?
This is another road block into the unveiling of truth.
And another road barrier is to be vulnerable.
I had to look that up to make sure I had it correctly.
"Susceptible to physical or emotional attack or harm."
I can see for victims, it is hard to be open to further attack or harm...to be, I guess, a willing victim.
This is what we are asking children and adult-children of abuse to do.
I certainly changes the stories we have told ourselves...and our family...when you add abuse to the stories we tell.
Again, how can you love and protect your family IF you leave out the truth about the abuse? How can you even say, you love and protect, them if you are not sharing this truth?
Hiding the truth about sexual abuse or physical and emotional abuse; will not eradicate it. It doesn't protect your family. It doesn't ensure more love.
In fact it does the complete opposite...it leaves your family more vulnerable.
How interesting.
If you are not vulnerable and honest, you will leave your family vulnerable.
In dysfunctional families it seems everything we think we are doing and what we are holding on to, is often the opposite of what we think.
It truly felt like I was being completely unloving and disloyal as I added truth to my childhood.
As I sit here today, my nostalgia is overshadowed still with the new truths of the past 10 years. The integrating what I thought and what is, hasn't settled down it nostalgia in the way, nostalgia feels.
I had to look up nostalgia....
"a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically for a period or place with happy personal associations."
Another tragedy of sexual abuse in childhood....nostalgia.
We may not know this feeling....a childhood of happy personal associations.
Thinking of this. I thought I was a non-sentimental person. For these feelings escaped me.
Now, I believe they were not there to be had.
Being sexually abused as a child removes the nostalgia from our life experience.
However, I feel like this time in my life will be my nostalgia someday.
I am in a good place in my story.
Where love, peace and joy are present.
Where I am awake and aware.
Where I have a voice and choice.
Where I am less afraid and say yes more.
Where I am excited and okay with uncertainty.
Where I know how strong I am.
And, how resilient.
Perhaps the further down the journey of life we go, the more we appreciate all the bends life takes us on.
I know where I have been and I have confidence that I will be given who and what I need for each part of my journey forward.
I will do my best to make this moment....something to be nostalgic for...
