Confessions of a Trauma Therapist by Mary K. Armstrong

Author:Mary K. Armstrong
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781926645193
Publisher: BPS Books

Chapter 12

Letters to My Parents

Besides my trips to Chicago, my sessions with Henry Regehr, my supervisor, and my personal therapy with Helen, I attended weekly group sessions with other beginning psychotherapists. In these groups we studied family theory by analyzing our own parent and sibling systems. I was fascinated by the dynamics of any family, and my own family was turning out to be more interesting than I would have liked. I was uncovering the dynamics of the couple who were my parents, discovering a sad, dysfunctional pair who were far from the ideal people I had created in my mind.

My journals from 1982 reveal that I continued working on my project to make sense of my family even when I went on vacation in July. As always we spent the time at our summer place on an island in Georgian Bay. Harvey was building a cottage to replace our big tent in the woods. Frank was thirteen years old, zipping around the bay in his aluminum boat, connecting with his friends. I was a woman who was involved in an intriguing, compelling search to figure out my own past.

Even in this idyllic setting I kept trying to make sense of the recent insights I had gleaned from my personal therapy and my professional development.

I was also busy earning my credentials as a marriage and family therapist. In the training sessions and my supervision sessions with Henry I was encouraged to ask my clients to write letters expressing their feelings—the sort of letters you don’t mail.

That summer I wrote some letters myself—long, careful letters to both of my parents. My father had been dead for thirteen years. My mother was still alive and a part of my life. First I wrote to my mother.

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