Published: June 16, 2025
[A word of caution: I talk about child abuse and the associated trauma, albeit in a non-graphic manner, in this one. If you've been the victim of child abuse and would rather not read about my experience with it, I promise I will not be offended if you skip this one. I'm pulling for you and I really hope you find the healing you need.]
I recently had my 37th birthday. These are typically joyous occasions, but for me, that was also the day my grandfather died. For most people, superheroes are fictional characters, but I am fortunate to say I knew and loved a real one. This was the man who was more of a father figure to me than my own, who taught me to have curiosity, be resourceful, love learning, and never be afraid to experiment. I can trace many of my positive character traits directly back to him.
In my very first post on this iteration of a blog, I wrote about how I could answer “yes” to all ten questions on the CDC/Kaiser Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire. I grew up in an incredibly dysfunctional and abusive environment. My grandmother, who died in 1996, was a devout Southern Baptist who was seemingly incapable of saying my dad's name without the next word out of her mouth being “stupid”. I have my own issues with certain sects of organized religion and their tendency to condone or even normalize the abuse of children, but despite that, my maternal grandparents were my safe space.
To this day, I have a strained and distant relationship with my immediate family. It's a defense mechanism for me; abuse almost always runs in a cycle perpetuated through generational trauma, and boy do I have a lot of it to deal with. For years, I have held onto this fantasy that they would eventually come around on their own, and so I have generally kept my distance, hoping it would magically happen while not rocking the boat.
Anger is an extremely powerful emotion, and I am coming to believe that boys and men who grow up in America simply do not understand it. We are taught to express every emotion through a filter of anger. More importantly, we are taught that anger is the only appropriate response to things we fear and by the way, you should fear everything. On top of that, when you're abused, you are taught to particularly fear your anger. Abusers innately know that if victims are able to tap into their own anger, the abuser is at tremendous risk of being held accountable for their actions. Thus we have the cycle and its repetition.
Now that the last person I had a truly positive relationship with is gone, I don't have to pretend anymore. I am not just angry, I am incredibly pissed off. My abusers were hurting me, and they knew it. They may not fully understand why they were hurting me, because there's unresolved trauma from their own abused childhoods as well as mental health and socioeconomic factors at play, but under the surface, it was wrong and they knew it.
This past weekend, I was finally able to allow myself to feel real anger for the first time in a while — probably ever. I spent years healing enough to prepare for that moment, and in a safe environment, it manifested as an unimaginable rage. I will spare the details for now, but it was a liberating, if somewhat scary, experience. Anger must be handled and used with great care. If you're the victim of abuse and still have the associated trauma, you may not yet be equipped to treat anger with the care it demands, but you can definitely get there.
I will have a lot to catch up on in my therapy appointment later this week. While I am sad that it took the death of my grandfather to finally find the courage and strength to start truly addressing my trauma, in a weird way it can be thought of as his last and greatest gift to me. Before closing his casket and helping carry it out the door of the funeral chapel last Friday, I whispered, “thank you for everything”. I am truly thankful and I hope he knows it.
He was my hero and I will miss him dearly. I think I'm ready to take it from here.