The Sound of Silence

Sonus Silentii
~ Latin for Sound ~
of Silence

Generational Silence

“I don’t know where to start or how to bear this heart. But I see where I’ve become what’s been done to me” chants singer-songwriter Alana Levandoski. She and James Finley, a former Trappist Monk, combined their heart’s work in Sanctuary, an album dedicated to healing traumatic wounds. The powerful lyrics resonate with my mother’s arduous journey through childhood trauma. Having spent over ten years writing, “My Mother’s Story and Mine,” I speak for both of us with truthful, loving compassion.

Because I lived inside the stifled pain of my family history, I understand the impact of generational transmission of voicelessness and trauma. Traumatic experiences soak into us in such a way we feel it wasn’t just what was done to us, more so how it silently slips its way into our unconsciousnesses and then unwittingly transmits pain to the following generation(s).

Closed Family Systems perpetuate voicelessness, keeping the child isolated from outsiders who might recognize the pain in the eyes and the impenetrable lips. Notice the childhood photo of my mother as a young girl; her lips sealed in silence. Her younger brothers lips reveal sadness, and their eyes bear hopelessness.

Covert trauma establishes itself as a taproot sprouting underground stems of distorted beliefs spreading throughout the ecosystem. It leaves children feeling inherently broken, with an inner interpretation that they are unloveable. My mother protected her father’s ugly truth and denied admitting she was in emotional pain throughout her life. She died in 1999. After her death, I found a poem she wrote when she was 13 years old, revealing her deepest feelings about her father. The poem was titled, Old Satan, He’s my Dad.

The fragile, yellowed and tattered paper in her beautifully scripted handwriting reveals my mother as a nascent creative woman, who quietly defied her father’s relentless hegemony. He mandated silence and compliance, dare she tell her truth beyond written form. Apparently, she found sanctuary in her thoughts and was able to keep them safely hidden out of his sight. How did she stow safely, this sacred poem from her Gestapo-like father until she ran away at age 16? She preserved it for 65 years and never spoke of it. I was fortunate to find it among her personal belongings as a clue to her inner awareness and pain she bore brazenly throughout her life impacting the next generation. Now, I, emerge out of my silence and slowly unveil, My Mother’s Story and Mine.