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Rip Van Winkle Revisited
A Two-Part Story
Jocie DeVries
Part 1: Asleep in Seattle
You know how I can get lost in the concept of a children’s story–well this time it’s Rip Van Winkle. Did you ever wonder how Rip Van Winkle felt when he woke up from his 20-year nap? Did he sleep the whole time or did he wake up a few times, just long enough to make him aware of his depression and promptly roll over and go back to sleep?
The last time we talked here on the Family Preservation Blog, we were discussing PTSD and how disruptive past traumas can be to our psyche. We brought the subject up, we all agreed that it was a very serious problem and then we all went back into our private little spaces like Rip Van Winkle did. Even the Blog went to sleep.
After 42 years of caring for children with special needs and twenty years of advocacy for those with cognitive disabilities, I’ve come to the conclusion that the human condition itself leaves all of us with some measure of PTSD by the time we reach adulthood. We have a tendency to think we can compare traumas to see who has suffered enough to really “deserve” to have PTSD and who hasn’t. But it doesn’t work that way. PTSD is about trauma to an individual’s heart and soul, about something that hurts deep inside. And there is no way to compare or measure who hurts the worst.
I am speaking as an optimist, believe it or not. At least that’s what I’ve been all of my life. While I’ve been Sleeping in Seattle, I’ve come to discover that my own PTSD didn’t begin with cancer; it began the day I cried too much, when I was 21 years old. The life event that originally triggered my PTSD was finding out that my sister had an aggressive brain tumor and it was malignant…That would have been bad enough, but the fact was that I had previously lost a younger sister with an aggressive form of leukemia. The initiating conflict that set my PSTD in motion was the natural clash of my optimistic temperament and the impending death of a second younger sister within five years of the first death.
All of my life I was taught, and I totally believed, what the Bible says–that all things work together for good to them that love the Lord. However, an optimistic temperament and an otherwise idyllic childhood, along with this belief system did not insulate me from tragedy. Believing that things will work together for good in the long run is different from believing that only good things will happen to me. It took a long for me to figure this out and understand the different concepts.
Stay tuned for Part II. In the meantime, What have you experienced that might set you up for PTSD—what “clashed” and caused trauma to you while raising children with FASD?
March 28th, 2009 at 6:49 pm Jocie, Once again you’ve got it. Poor Rip probably occasionally woke up, looked out from under his eyelids and said “Nothin’s changed, I’m not moving.” Part of our problem as caregivers is that we enter into the caregiver role with a load of childhood trauma and life stresses that just come with living. Delinda
March 29th, 2009 at 6:29 am I agree definitely childhood traumas got and get triggered as I raise my child affected by FASD. I like the allegory of Rip Van Winkle :) hmmm makes me want to go back to bed. SK
April 4th, 2009 at 10:07 am Thanks for this perspective. I also am an optimist, blessed with a pretty idyllic childhood, and am now raising two children adopted from Russia. One has a FAS diagnosis, the other we are working on what we suspect to be a FASE diagnosis. So much of what you said in this entry and in other writings of yours I’ve come across has been very helpful in giving me new ways to ponder what I’ve been given.