This piece is important and it resonates with me, but not because of health issues. Behavioural problems also stem from traumatic childhoods, and the fright/flight/freeze response precludes reflective processes. You can’t just ‘park’ your hurt and speed away from your own family problems without collateral damage to those left behind. What is left goes on.
When I was twelve, I was coming home from swimming at my neighbor’s dock when I saw an ambulance’s flashing lights in our driveway. I still remember the asphalt burning my feet as I stood, paralyzed, and watched the paramedics take away my father. It was as if I knew those flashing lights were a harbinger that my childhood was over.
At the hospital, a surgeon performed “minor” elective bowel surgery on my young dad. The surgeon made an error, and instead of my father coming home to the “welcome home” banners we’d painted, he died.
The medical care system failed my father miserably. Then the medical care system began to fail me.
At fourteen, I started fainting. The doctors implied I was trying to garner attention. In college I began having full seizures. I kept them to myself, fearful of seeming a modern Camille. I’d awaken on the floor drenched…
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Life Going Down 