Becca Baisch is a pediatric psychiatrist who quiets her busy days and mind by writing books, short stories, and essays.
A mother and her teenager come to see me, a child psychiatrist, for an evaluation. When I ask my standard questions about prenatal and developmental history, the mother hesitates, then shares a story. A story of crawling through the smashed window in the middle of the night to escape her abuser, glass shards scraping along her pregnant belly. Looking at her teenager, she says with uncertainty, “But we have a good life now, don’t we?”
I compare this mother’s story to “Always Fine,” (Intima, Fall 2022), an essay by accomplished writer Jane Ratcliffe, who masterfully details the concept of intergenerational trauma.
Ratcliffe describes suffering a concussion, something she assumes will heal, but when her body resists the process, she seeks to understand psychologically what she cannot understand biologically. “For two decades, I approached my head and brain injury as a battle to be won. I punished my body, angry with her for taking so long to heal. I prioritized physical healing protocols… I shut down my emotions, telling myself I could access them later when I was healthy.”
Ratcliffe discovers that her parents’ wartime experiences, the ones glorified as heroic, were in reality horrifying. She grasps that trauma’s imprint can be passed onto the next generation. “This notion of intergenerational trauma blew my mind… being raised by parents who are depressed or anxious from their own trauma, we carry the cultural weight of history. Trauma dumping, my therapist calls it. If the person who experienced the trauma cannot process it, it’s passed on to the next generation, and so on, until it is healed.”
Rarely is trauma explicitly stated when I first meet young patients, and often they tell me, “I had a great childhood.” I listen instead with my “third ear,” a skill taught during my training, where I tune into the deeper, unspoken layers of a family’s story. In my essay “Barbie Feet” (Intima, Spring 2023), I reflect upon my evolution as a child psychiatrist, using my own experiences and attributes to gently draw out those stories, in hopes of igniting the spark of a patient’s journey toward healing.
Here in my office, as the mother and her teen begin their own journey, so too does Ratcliffe, who writes, “At night now, I sit on the couch and listen. My body tells me her story. ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I love you.’ And together we slowly heal.”
Becca Baisch is a pediatric psychiatrist who quiets her busy days and mind by writing books, short stories, and essays. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in Minnesota Women’s Press, Months to Years, Pulse: Voices from the Heart of Medicine, and will be featured in Evening Street Review (2024). Connect with her at beccabaisch.com and Twitter @beccabaisch.