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I am the product of a mixed marriage. On my English side, I know much about my family antecedents; on the Zoroastrian side, very little. Only now, through taking a course on Zoroastrian culture and civilization, am I learning about this side of myself, culturally speaking, including a new-to-me concept, the marginal man. When one suffers a catastrophic brain injury that takes away one’s identity and adversely affects family relationships, knowing one’s history becomes crucial to recovering from brain injury grief and trauma.
I wrote about this in my book Brain Injury, Trauma, and Grief: How to Heal When You Are Alone, which contains Action Plans to help readers do the practical and thinking work of recovering from brain injury grief. One such plan encompasses getting to know your family history. The following is an adapted excerpt on this topic from my book.
Action Plan: Learn family history
Brain injury destructs your role in your family and friendships. Family history affects how you and your family members react to your injury.
A Snippet of My Family History
“[The] Japanese invaded Burma, causing [my father’s] entire family to flee to India in 1942—his father with the army overland and him, his pregnant mother, and maternal grandmother, along with a motley group of refugees, in a Dakota airplane flown by Chinese pilots. As they approached the Burma-India border, the Indian Air Force flew out to fight off the Japanese attackers. He went from a cushy life to an uncertain, nomadic one in India; he determined to become self-sufficient.” —From Lifeliner: The Judy Taylor Story
My parents grew up during WWII. My mother lived on the east coast of England, where, as a young child, she saw German bombs drop in her rural area, their shapes resurrecting in her mind when she saw the local church’s organ pipes. Meanwhile, my father grew up in Burma, safe and secure, mostly an only child doted on by multiple adults, taught by his maternal grandmother. His 18-month-old sister died suddenly, in one day, when he was 4 years old. Then the Japanese invaded and chased him, his pregnant mother, and his maternal grandparents over the Indian Ocean to India, turning him and his remnant family into nomadic refugees. And so began intergenerational trauma.
My parents learnt to be self-sufficient at very young ages. Staying busy is how adults traditionally deal with childhood trauma, and that’s what my parents did. Outside of raising us three children, work consumed my father’s hours, and volunteering my mother’s. They expected us to manage our own problems; my mother taught me to be street-smart and fight my own battles; my father taught us to achieve. If you want to achieve, you must be driven. That and high expectations, like most Asian cultures, are a hallmark of Zoroastrian culture.
Knowing my family’s war and intergenerational trauma helps me understand their unfathomable responses (unfathomable to health care professionals raised here, not having experienced growing up amongst explosions, flaming airplanes, and people being torn apart and killed around you). Although knowing doesn’t change my circumstances, understanding at least helps me cope psychologically. I learnt from reading What Happened To You? by Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Bruce Perry that the changes war wrought on my parents weren’t simply psychological but brain-based. War changed their perspectives and their brain function.
What is your family history on your mother’s side? On your father’s side?
Being able to discuss this with a therapist is the best thing to do. Unfortunately, for me, I needed a therapist versed in cross-cultural practices, WWII intergenerational trauma, and brain injury. I searched for years to find a competent Medicare-covered therapist who had some knowledge of brain injury. I had no hope of finding one versed in all three.
What Do You Do When Alone in Trying to Figure Out Your History?
I had long been my own historian. After my brain injury, I continued that habit. I reminded myself of how family history plays out in parental, uncles’, and siblings’ responses in an attempt to lessen their impact on me. It’s not me and my brain injury they’re responding to—it’s their war trauma. Or inherited intergenerational trauma. Knowing how your family history affected parental and/or sibling responses may help you distance yourself from their reactions, to see them not as personal but as the natural outcome of trauma-induced brain changes. And perhaps, it makes you feel that you’re kind of all in the same boat, even if they don’t want to admit it.
Read the chapter on relationships with others in my book to learn how to spot patterns, to understand your historical role in your family, and to cope using methods such as loving detachment.
Copyright ©2022, 2024, and 2026 Shireen Anne Jeejeebhoy
