Today (17/01/2022) during meditation I evocated one of the most traumatizing event of (the very many of) my own childhood.
I’m 12, it’s Summer 1979, My mother, my little sister, and I are having holidays in IsolaVerde, a locality close to Venice, south of the lagoon.
The separation among my parents did happens some months before, the idea to go holiday the three of us is probably an attempt from my mother to establish a “new normality”, to pretend nothing and induce serenity in our life.
But it doesn’t work, my father now lives in our previous house in the middle of countryside, an enormous empty house, and has become completely insane, he suddenly appears in the camping, breaks into our bungalow while my mother is having a shower and just start beating her.
I realize what’s happening only because I am getting back after a swim at the beach in that precise moment, I hear my mother shouting and when I get inside the bungalow the scene is that of a horror movie, the shower box , completely made of blurred white glass is splattered with blood in the internal to the point of appearing almost completely red.
In fact my father and my mother are both inside the box, water still going on, my mother naked and shouting, my father dressed, completely wet and beating her.
I escape outside the bungalow looking for help, I have the unhealthy idea of telling the first group of adults that I find (all males) something like: "my mother and father are fighting, my father is beating her, please help us".
And I immediately realize my mistake: they do not get the danger of the situation they just answer me back that quarrelling among wife and husband may happen and they do not dare to interfere in a married couple life.
Nobody is going to help us.
I run back to the bungalow crying, knowing my sole option is to face an impossible fight but luckily my father, dangerous and completely unpredictable as an hurricane, is gone! My mother is battered, still stained with blood and in tears, but safe, no serious injuries.
Meditation continue, I worked a lot on myself to deal with my personal traumas and when I revisit events like this I like to enjoy the sense of forgiveness that I reached in time, especially to my inner child, I hug him, reassure him, everything will go fine, everything will always go fine, one way or the other.
My Meditation ends and I am happy, ready to start a new wonderful day.
Have you had any trauma or unpleasant happening during your childhood? How did you deal with that when you have grown up?
(The following might maybe be more interesting for therapists: )
I do not know you but for me it took a while to understand that the main task on a therapeutic journey is very often related to the self-forgiveness, in fact even events like this one the patient tends to feel guilty for what he/she could have done, instead of simply honour the fact that very little was possible to be done indeed.
Do you agree with this assertion? What is your most meaningful personal experience as a therapist about this?
