A Reflection on Family Trauma

I have been debating for months—well, struggling is probably a better word—about writing this piece. It’s one of those things where writing in a journal isn’t enough, and I feel that what’s in my mind needs to be set free.

I’ve written many times about family struggles while growing up and the absence of a father figure in my life. But it wasn’t until the passing of my grandmother in May 2023 that I found some answers to why I struggled so much growing up, why I’ve been such a strong advocate for women, and why I always say that men need to do better. I’m sure this issue will continue to develop as the years go by and earlier generations find their voices before they transition from this life to the next. Sadly, it would have been much better to have these discussions and work through deep-seated issues when they were younger, raising their families, so they wouldn’t pass their pain on to the next generation. But it is what it is. Nothing I can do now. Resolving the lives of three generations of maternal genealogy is impossible. All I can do is study their history, understand how they got there, and learn from the conditions that cultivated the toxic environment they experienced—so I can avoid repeating that history.

I want to point out, as I mentioned in my extended “About Me,” that my full name is Edward Ortiz-Vázquez. This piece focuses on my mother’s side, the Vázquez family, and not the Ortiz side, which remains unknown to me, as they were never part of my life.

In May 2023, my grandmother, Ana Romero Colón, passed away at the age of 94. I went home to be with the family during that difficult time and to support my mother, who, understandably, was having a really hard time. For me, it was also a sad realization: the only grandparent I grew up with was gone. My grandfather had died in a car accident nine years before I was born, and I never knew my paternal grandparents. My grandmother was a strong woman who lost two children on the way to the hospital and raised seven children on her own after her husband passed away. How exactly she managed that is unknown to me because my family isn’t one for deep conversations. I know she supplemented her income by sewing, but beyond that, I’m not sure.

During her burial, my mom told me that one of my grandmother’s final wishes was not to be buried with my grandfather. At first, I was a little shocked, but then she explained that my grandfather was a very abusive husband, both physically and mentally. Her request made a lot of sense. Who would want to be buried with someone who abused them? But then a thought came to mind: Why am I hearing this now? At 49, learning about this painful aspect of my family history was hard to grasp, and to be honest, I was a little angry. In that moment, I understood why my grandmother chose to stay single and focus all her energy on raising her children. I also understood why she was so upset with my mom’s choices in men when I was a child and probably before I was born. My grandmother knew my mom was making terrible decisions but couldn’t express it in a constructive way, which often led to fights that I still remember. With a fourth-grade education, my grandmother did the best she could to warn my mom about the dangers of being with abusive men, but of course, my mom, being young, couldn’t grasp the underlying advice. The result was years of me witnessing domestic violence, powerless to do anything—except for the time I tried to hurt one of those men when I was little. It wasn’t until I became an adult and a Soldier that I confronted the last man in my mom’s life, over 21 years ago, and finally freed her from decades of abuse.

Fast-forward to April of this year, when my mom visited us. We were sitting at the dinner table, and the conversation turned to why my grandmother wanted to be buried separately. My mom then told me about the tragic life of her paternal grandmother, Isabel Ortiz Camacho. She explained that Isabel was killed by a man who was infatuated with her. When my great-grandmother didn’t return his affections, he murdered her. I was shocked and asked my mom for details, but she didn’t know much. After my mom returned to Puerto Rico, I decided to search for information about what happened. Sure enough, I found her death certificate and other information on an ancestry website. I’ll spare the gruesome details, but her death was horrific. She was born in 1897, married Emilio Vázquez Sánchez (my great-grandfather, born in 1899), and they had at least one son—my grandfather, Ismael Vázquez Ortiz, who was born in 1925. Isabel died at age 42 in 1939 at the hands of an infatuated and evil man, two years after my great-grandfather passed away. Ismael later married my grandmother, Ana, around 1948, and my mom was born in 1951.

Tracing that history helps me make sense of things. My grandfather witnessed the tragic loss of his mother, Isabel, at the hands of a violent man, and later became abusive toward his wife, my grandmother. My mom, having grown up in that environment and having witnessed the death of her father in a car accident at age 13, came to see abuse and violence as a normal part of life, living much of her life under similar circumstances. She didn’t seek help or try to work through her trauma, and as a result, I witnessed her suffering from the time I was a little boy until I was 30. That’s three generations of domestic violence on my mother’s side.

I also want to highlight that my grandmother’s mother, Arcadia Colón Romero, lost her husband, Carlos Romero Figueroa, in 1947 and stayed single until she died in 1994 at the age of 97. So now I have two great-grandmothers and a grandmother who chose to remain single after their husbands died. Were those decisions influenced by their experiences with domestic violence? I would guess the answer is yes.

Researching my family history and piecing together why I lacked a positive male role model throughout my life is painful, but at the same time, it motivates me to be better. I hope my experience will help guide my son as he enters adulthood in the coming years.

There are three reasons I’m writing this post. First, I needed to get this out of my head and notebook; it’s been consuming me for a while. As G. Lynn Nelson said in his book Writing and Being, “until something from your journal wants to work its way out and into public writing, there are no rules or standards that need concern you.”1 Well, today, my words needed to come out into the public realm. Second, and most importantly, this is a call to anyone currently living in an abusive or violent environment to get out—not just for your own well-being, but for the people you love. If you’ve already left that environment, consider this an urgent call to resolve those deep-seated issues and communicate with your children and loved ones. They need to know about your past and how you regained your freedom so they can avoid repeating the same destructive cycle. Lastly, writing this helps me frame the conversation I’m going to have with my son in the near future. This cycle of violence ends with me, and I want him to know what happened and how to avoid falling into the same pattern.

I’ll leave you with this thought. When my wife and I got married and began discussing potential names for our children, I told her that if we had a girl, I wanted to name her Isabel. At the time, my reason was simple: I liked the name because my favorite author is Isabel Allende. Not knowing then that my great-grandmother’s name was also Isabel, I wonder now if that was her whispering her name to me. Maybe my son will have a daughter, and he can name her Isabel, so she can live again.

  1. Nelson, G. Lynn, Writing and Being Embracing Your Life through Creative Journaling (P. 4). Makawao, Maui: Inner Ocean Publishing, Inc, 2004. ↩︎

82 thoughts on “A Reflection on Family Trauma”

  2. So beautiful! Yes! Totally get this! Trauma in my family included my European mother having an affair with a first generation Mexican man, marrying the man who is named on my birth certificate.. who although knowing that she was pregnant with another man’s child, both he and his Hungarian Polish family loved me like their own. And they knew. They knew. And treated me fat better than the racist maternal family I grew up with.. for that reason I want to honor them everywhere.. my last name Vargas is a self selected Sephardic name which correlated with his beloved mothers last name .. my grandma Em

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    1. Thank you for sharing a little bit about yourself. Sometimes it’s hard to process the trauma we suffered growing up, but we must make sense of it and find peace to move forward. Changing your last name to Vargas was a wonderful way to honor them.

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  4. A very moving piece and if your son read this it would be a good way lo lead into discussion. A friend wrote a book about her childhood for her three adult children to explain why she refused to see her alcoholic mother. Then they had a much better understanding.

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    1. Thank you very much for your comment and for sharing that story. That’s a powerful way to explain the issue to her children, and it can also be passed down to the next generation to explain the effects of alcohol on the family.

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  5. Dear Edward,

    First allow me to commend your desire to discover more about your family history for the benefit of your son and your own peace and for your courage in sharing your discoveries publicly. Doing so has the potential to help others. I also appreciate your sensitivity surrounding the serious topic of abuse and your concern for others. Your personal essay, that highlights the breaking of generational abusive patterns, ends on a beautiful note and hopeful note. 🕊️

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    1. Michele, thank you for your words. They mean a lot to me. That is my hope: that my words and experience can help those who might be going through abuse and that they can find some hope knowing that they can be free from this terrible situation.

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  6. Edward,

    My sincerest respect to you for the courage to not only share this post, but to face these issues and commit to putting an end to this kind of behavior. I don’t think that I can say much that has not already been said, but I can share that I, too, grew up with minimal paternal guidance, but I was fortunate enough to have two fine men I could look up to in my uncle and my grandfather.

    Much like you, the one thing my father taught me was the kind of man I did not want to be.

    My thanks again for sharing this. You have my admiration.

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    1. Thanks, Kevin, for those words. Having those men in your life was key, and I think that’s what we, as men, need to do—step up when necessary and support the boys in our families when fathers are missing in action, helping them on their way to manhood is really important. So kudos to your uncle and grandfather.

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      1. You are very correct, Edward. If not for them, I don’t know how I’d have turned out. There’s already inherent baggage that came with not having a decent father. Without them, God only knows how much more I’d have had to deal with.

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  7. Hi Edward, it is very brave of you to share so much about your family tragedies here. I’ve always thought that many women have a very hard life and your story has confirmed my thoughts. I see and hear about instances of abuse of women and children every day in South Africa. Domestic violence is very bad in this country due to poverty, ignorance and other factors. Huge hugs to you for showing your son the way to a better life.

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    1. Thank you so much, Robbie. I really appreciate your words. I started reading a UNICEF report that came out yesterday, and the statistics on the number of girls and women globally who are victims of abuse broke my heart. I’ll probably make some comments tomorrow since it’s International Day of the Girl.

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  9. Thank you for sharing this. As someone else pointed out, you’re also stopping the cycle of secrecy. You may already know this but in 12 step programs there’s a saying that ‘you’re as sick as you secrets’. That always resonated w me.
    I love the name Isabel too and the books of Isabel Allende. I loved what you shared regarding that name.
    Again, thanks for being so insightful, honest, and courageous in this post.🙏

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  10. Strong story, Edward, that you finished in a beautiful way. Domestic violence marks us for life, even when we go through it to resolve it and heal it (here I am also sharing a bit of my personal experience). In our hands is the decision to end it for good from our lineage. Besides the trauma and the suffering, there’s a bigger perspective on life and a greater compassion toward all (related and non-related to the case) that we can take from such situations. I hope you find some solace and resolution to your personal experience by sharing it to all of us. I humbly bow to your courage, my friend 🙏 I thought you may find it interesting to know that my second name is Isabel 🙂 Sending you lots of light and infinite blessings 🙏🌟

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    1. Thank you so much, Susana, for your wisdom and for sharing your experience. I felt a great relief when I posted this yesterday. This is a burden I have been carrying for a long time. The addition of what happened to my great-grandmother Isabel and the reason for my grandmother Ana’s final wish filled my emotional tank in a negative way, and I needed to release that pressure. Thank you for sharing that your second name is Isabel. Susana Isabel is such a beautiful name. Blessing to you, my friend. 🙏🏼

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  11. My grandparents had the unfortunate custom of banishing kids to the “kids’ table” at meal times, so I didn’t learn much about my family history until I was trying to figure out how I ended up divorced and in therapy and my father and I had some of our first real conversations about family history; it was a lot more emotionally complicated than I’d thought. On the other hand, when I visit my brother, I also end up waiting for his kids to be busy doing something else before having real conversations with him. And Isabel Allende writes some beautiful prose.

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    1. Thank you for reading and commenting. It’s troubling that, when children become adults, some parents and grandparents choose not to engage in adult conversations with them. There are discussions that must occur as soon as our children are capable of understanding, especially if social issues such as abuse, addiction (of any kind), or discrimination are present in the family. In my opinion, it’s a missed opportunity that only encourages the continuation of the problem.

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  12. Thank you for this Edward. Breaking the silence on this topic is so vitally important for people to heal, learn, and end the cycle. If I may break my own silence, I grew up in similar circumstances of generational violence. One example of many, my aunt was murdered, shot several times in the chest by her boyfriend, in front of her 2 small children. I’ve been determined to stop the cycle, through my education, School Crisis work, volunteering with rape and abuse programs, and with women’s shelters/child safety centers…
    My husband of nearly 30 years is a fantastic man. We raised our only child, our son to be a good man. And he was. A terrible near-death accident has caused more damage than I’ll share here. It feels like life dealt us a terrible setback.
    So many (abusive) men suffer silently from their own history of abuse, brain trauma, mental/emotional illnesses, addiction, etc… these sorts of things interfere with them being the kind of good men they/we want them to be… None of those things are excuses for harmful behavior, but if we could stop those types of traumas, the odds of people having better relationships would greatly improve.

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    2. I do sometimes wonder why some men grow up in abusive households and become abusers while others grow up in abusive households and push back against abuse. I’ve read the key is a healthy male role model outside the house.

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  13. First, I’m sorry that your mother and grandmothers experienced abuse. That is a very sad reality in many peoples’ lives. My family has similar issues with alcohol which has masked and intensified other problems. Your bravery in confronting the issue of violence and dedication to stamping out the generational cycle of abuse are commendable. Thank you for being part of the solution for a healthy future. Your willingness to talk openly is so important in creating change.

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  15. Thank you for sharing such a deeply personal and powerful reflection. I can only imagine how much courage it took to write this piece and open up about your family’s history. It’s clear that you’ve been through a lot, and your desire to break the cycle of pain and advocate for change is truly inspiring.

    I’m sorry for the struggles you’ve faced, especially with the loss of your grandmother and the painful realizations that followed. It’s heartbreaking to see how trauma can ripple through generations, but I admire your commitment to understanding this history and using it to guide your own path as a father.

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    1. Thank you so much, Willie, for your kind words. It’s definitely a very difficult experience, and I know that millions of people are going through similar or worse situations around the world. It’s an evil that needs to be eradicated. Much prayer and action on the part of men is needed.

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  17. This was a touchingly candid post to read, Edward. Kudos to you for having the courage to put it out there and props to you for making the decision to educate your son, and stop the cycle of violence.

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  18. UGH… respect. You spoke your truth, you acknowledged the traumas of others with empathy, and you broke the chain. You represent a fork in the road of the family history – and that crossroads deserves to be acknowledged… take comfort in the fact that the future looks bright. xox

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  19. Kudos on your courage to face these difficult issues and family dynamics Edward, and the courage to share and be vulnerable. I have found being vulnerable to be empowering. My father’s side has a history with alcohol and I think abuse although it was never discussed. I’ve chosen to not marry partly because I saw very few loving and successful marriages. And I’m very careful about alcohol and don’t like being around big drinkers.

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    1. Thank you so much for your comment and for sharing. I remember the day my uncle told me that sometimes men need to get drunk to forget about their problems. It didn’t help, of course, and that was the last time I listened to his advice.

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  20. It’s difficult to find out things about family that are so horrendous. But at least you understand now why the women in your family are so protective and try to be as independent as possible. If you can stop that cycle of abuse, that’s great!

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  21. Very courageous post, Ed. Being vulnerable is not easy. I appreciate that your stance is that the violence stops with you. Domestic violence is a serious problem. Being a victim at one point in my life, I refused to stay there. A major point you share is that it does affect others in the family, particularly the children. They just don’t stay children. Adults do need to address those past issues. Thank you so much for sharing.

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    1. Thank you so much, Sandra, for your comment and for sharing your experience. I believe that men need to speak up against this evil, and by working together, we can hopefully put an end to this nonsense.

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  22. Wow, Edward. So much to unpack here, and I’m sure you’ve been holding onto to so much for a while about this.
    Our skeletons in our closet sure are haunting, especially since there is often so much shrouded in mystery. It always is such a very strange and scary eye opener when patterns in families continue. I’m so sorry for what the women in your family went through, and I know how it is to grow up without a father figure present, so I can relate to you there 🙏
    It’s very commendable and smart instead of just brushing “the past” under the rug (as some are apt to do) you’re not only making this known but also going to let your son know about the ripple effects this has had on your family. Not everything should stay locked away.

    Very emotional post, thanks again for sharing. It means a lot. And the name Isabel is indeed very beautiful, and I wouldn’t be surprised there’s a reason why you felt such a strong connection to it, even before you knew about the history 🫶

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    1. Thank you so much, Laura, for such an amazing comment. I really appreciate it. After writing and posting this, reading your post “Go For the Goals” helped change my mood a little, especially the coffee jokes. You’re right; I felt a strong connection to Isabel, and after all these years, it finally makes sense. 🙏🏼

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      1. It good you got it out and purged it, that’s definitely got to feel a lot better 😊 I’m glad you enjoyed the post and I’m always up for a coffee joke! Humor is the best medicine 🙏 amazing you felt that connection, we are often more aware of things than we even know how to describe 😊 that’s good it makes sense for you, and I hope healing energy comes forth soon

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    1. Thank you, Liz. It’s very difficult, and sometimes drastic measures are needed, such as removing yourself from that environment and cutting some family ties for a time in order to find a way to healing.

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  25. Wow this was truly personal and very touching. I understand why it took you long to get it out. But rest assured it will touch the hearts of those who read it.

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  26. Oh, Edward, you have so much family trauma to process and move on from. Your words speak volumes as to the constructive and positive path you have chosen to help yourself and also help others who find themselves dealing with similar family histories of family violence. Bless you.

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  28. Thanks for sharing. Indeed, this is a delicate and personal piece. Unfortunately, the cycle of domestic violence keeps turning, trapping so many in its painful situations. It’s heartbreaking how often women feel powerless to escape. Your words bring necessary attention, and I hope they inspire others to seek the support they need

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    1. Thank you very much for reading and for your kind words. Sadly, you are absolutely right about the cycle of domestic violence around the world. We need to continue shining a light on the problem and work to eradicate this evil from our society.

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    2. I recently read a memoir about a woman who took a long time to leave an abusive relationship; she stuck with it because the authority figures in her life, mostly religious ones, kept telling women to blame themselves for anything wrong in relationships. She didn’t leave until she realized if she stayed, her children would learn all the wrong lessons.

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        1. Poetry seems to be another emotional escape route. Almost everyone I knew on the open mic circuit where I used to live was escaping lousy parents, and none of them still believed in their parents’ religions.

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  29. Wow, Edward. Your ending gave me the chills.

    What an incredible post about a tough topic. It strikes me that what you are ending is not only the cycle of violence — but also the cycle of secrecy. I’ve found that the traumas that aren’t talked about are the ones that hold the most power.

    I love your advocacy for women and also your incredible commitment to making things better. Beautiful post, Edward!

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