This is a story of mothers. This is a story of daughters. This is a
story of the trauma we carry and the trauma we tend to. So begins this
multigenerational memoir that explores the author's maternal history of
repeated trauma, separation, adverse childhood experiences (ACES) and
their impact on mental health. Set against a twenty-year dialogue with
her mother Barbara who suffers from long undiagnosed PTSD, author
Elizabeth Wilcox opens her maternal history with the birth of her
illegitimate grandmother Violet to a German house servant outside London
in 1904. With her mother's encouragement, Wilcox goes on to trace the
lives of her grandmother Violet and her mother Barbara, both of whom are
deeply impacted by maternal separation and the complex trauma they have
endured. Violet undergoes multiple separations: from her mother until
the age of six, from her German Jewish stepfather during WWI at the age
of ten, and from her own three-year-old daughter Barbara when her family
escapes without her from Holland during Hitler's invasion. Later put on
a train to Wales with her eighteen-month-old brother Neville during
Operation Pied Piper, Barbara also tragically endures an itinerant
childhood characterized by maternal separation, foster homes, boarding
schools, and abuse. Through a dual timeline that is both present day and
historic, Wilcox weaves together these documented and imagined voices of
the women who precede her, while using her experience as a journalist
and writer in the field of early childhood education and mental health
to explore the impact of adverse childhood experiences on adult
wellbeing and mental health. Through her work and her mother Barbara who
has successfully raised seven children despite her difficult past,
Wilcox also shows what it means to parent with intention, forgiveness
and unconditional love.
