#trauma and memory

[unwelcome-ozian]

[aventurineswife]

The desert winds of Sigonia-IV howled that evening, but the canvas of stars above remained unshaken—eternal witnesses to the fleeting warmth of life below.

In the flickering glow of the Kakava bonfire, the last festival before the end, Kakavasha sat curled against his sister’s side. He was small, cheeks streaked with dust, dark lashes heavy from a day of celebration and too little water. The embroidered scarf she had wrapped around his shoulders shimmered faintly with turquoise threads—an echo of their people’s pride.

He clutched the tiny lucky charm his mother had left him. It pulsed warm in his hand. A rough-carved stone, shaped like a curling wave—a fragment of a turquoise meteorite. She had told him once it would "sing when he truly needed to hear it."

Above the fire’s crackle and the murmurs of prayer, his sister's voice lifted into the dry night air:

“Hush, my little child

Drift into slumber

In your dreams, you'll run and play

In paradise…”

Her voice was soft, reverent. It threaded through the smoke and silence like a lullaby sewn from starlight. He leaned against her, eyes half-lidded, the weight of her necklace brushing his forehead. It was his mother’s—the only thing his sister had left to remember her by.

She smiled down at him, stroking his hair. The tattooed mark of the Avgins shimmered faintly on her wrist in the firelight. She sang the next verse slower, her voice trembling slightly.

“A silent, icy gaze

Falls upon us

Like a fragile reed

Trembling in fear…”

Kakavasha stirred, his voice muffled, “Sister… when will the dawn come for us?”

She paused, then whispered, “We will definitely see the dawn one day, Kakavasha. I promise.”

But she wouldn’t look at him. And in the silence that followed, only the bonfire answered—its flames consuming the Knots of Cyclicality.

That was the last time she sang.

The night turned crimson.

The Katicans came like shadows split from the sky—muffled steps, glinting blades, quiet chants of vengeance. The Avgins, gathered in reverence, had not been prepared.

His sister pushed him into the space inside their shared tent, kissing his forehead and tucking the charm into his palm again.

He watched through a crack as she turned to meet the raiders.

Her voice did not tremble.

But her scream did.

And then—it was just smoke.

And stars.

And silence.

The silence now was artificial—manufactured, filtered, sterile. Aventurine sat on a velvet-backed chair before a wall of starlight projected onto the glass. The distant glow of Penacony loomed ahead, its debts vast and its politics delicate. Another game. Another risk. Another stage.

He removed his glasses. His magenta and cyan eyes, vibrant and cutting, dimmed slightly as they caught sight of something on the shelf beside him: a turquoise stone, polished now, encased in a thin ring of meteor-iron.

His gloved right hand gently touched it.

Then, so softly that even the room’s sensors didn’t register a sound spike, Aventurine began to hum.

The melody was broken, like wind tracing old ruins—but still there.

“Hush, my little child

Drift into slumber

In your dreams, you'll run and play

In paradise…”

He stopped. His voice cracked.

And suddenly, without warning, he pressed his left hand—gloveless and trembling—against his chest. Not to draw attention. No audience watched. But it was habit. The same hand he always hid when the stakes rose too high.

“Sister said we will definitely see the dawn one day…” he whispered.

A beat.

His voice dropped to a rasp.

“…but when will the dawn shine upon us?”

[funeral]

Memory is a reconstructive process that is continuously selecting, adding, deleting, rearranging, and updating information—all to serve the ongoing adaptive process of survival and living.

Peter A. Levine, Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past

[littlecakeclub]

Eight Generations, One Line of Fire: A Review of Homegoing

Two half-sisters are born in 18th-century Ghana. One is married to a British colonizer, the other sold into slavery. Homegoing follows their descendants across eight generations, from the Gold Coast to Harlem, weaving a powerful tapestry of history and survival.

Reading Homegoing felt like returning to everything I love about historical fiction.

The book’s structure is one of its most striking features: each chapter follows a different character, a direct descendant of either Effia or Esi, alternating between the Ghanaian and African-American branches of the family. One generation, one chapter. Each one a glimpse into a life shaped by its own context : the trauma of colonization, the horror of the transatlantic slave trade, the long shadow of Jim Crow, the weight of incarceration, the aching silence of broken families.

It reads like a series of interlinked short stories, with recurring themes and symbols passed on like heirlooms : fire, water, loss, the sea. The transitions are seamless and there’s something deeply moving about witnessing the echoes between lives that never meet, yet carry the same scars. Pulling this off without losing the reader or flattening the characters is no small feat, and Yaa Gyasi does it with grace and clarity.

The writing is deceptively simple. It flows. There are moments where a single image or sentence lingers long after the chapter ends. I wouldn't call it lyrical in the overly poetic sense (it’s sharper than that) but it has rhythm, weight, breath.

I also loved the political and historical depth of the novel. It doesn’t over-explain. It shows. Each chapter subtly layers its context: colonization, forced labor, conversion to Christianity, displacement, racial violence, addiction, broken systems. And still, there's tenderness : friendships, poetry, desire, quiet acts of resistance. The novel never lets its characters become mere witnesses of history. They are history — living, hurting, choosing, sometimes failing.

That said, if I had one small critique, it's that a few relationships (or emotional arcs) felt slightly repetitive across generations. I found myself feeling déjà vu in two specific chapters, and it briefly pulled me out of the flow. But it didn’t last. The vastness and ambition of the book far outweighed those echoes.

The final chapter (without spoiling) is gorgeous. It ties the whole novel together in a way that’s both symbolic and deeply physical. You feel the weight of everything that came before, and then you exhale. A return. A reckoning. A reunion.

This is easily one of my favorite historical fiction novels. The emotional architecture of it is brilliant. The concept is daring and beautifully executed. It reminds me why I love this genre — the power of memory, the long reach of the past, and the strength it takes to hold on to your name, your story, your people.

[anakinsafterlife]

I have so many things to say about Kenobi and I am certain that I can't say all of them. But point one: this show is as close to perfection as this franchise will get and it brought me to actual, honest to the stars, tears. This was, after so many decades of waiting, Star Wars for adults. Not only was the storytelling skilled, but the plot was a complex exploration of both personal and intergenerational trauma and dissociation. This is the prequel that we were promised in the nineties, but that George Lucas, bless his heart, never delivered because he was trying so hard to straddle the line between children's entertainment and mature film making. That said, Kenobi is, perhaps, only a story that Ewan McGregor, Hayden Christensen and James Earl Jones (as well as fantastically talented actors for original secondary characters such as Bail, Owen and Beru, who absolutely get their moments here, especially Owen) themselves could tell, a way of bringing their own experiences with these characters--who quite literally changed their lives as well as exerting influence on the lives of millions of viewers--full-circle.

In addition to exploring Obi-Wan's own PTSD, the show also finally confronts the dichotomy of Anakin's identity as the dissociation and trauma response that it is. We hear everyone around him who has prior experience with him referring to him as Anakin including Obi-Wan, Reva, and Palpatine himself (who refers to "your past"). By showing Vader's immersion into memory of training with Kenobi on Alderaan, we are physically shown that Vader references "Anakin's" memories; we are shown that he is the same man as that teenaged Padawan, and the "change" from Anakin to Vader is not some kind of demonic possession, but only a legal fiction which he leans on as an extreme coping mechanism. It is a coping mechanism that is sadly apparent to everyone who is aware of his past, and it is only when Vader's mask is cracked and Obi-Wan sees the ravaged face of his former student and brother-in-arms, when he is forced to confront his own ugliest deeds, that he retreats from reality himself and embraces Vader's insistence on his seperate personhood, and it is clear that he does so because living with the knowledge of what Anakin became after Mustafar is simply unbearable.

If that weren't brilliant enough, not only does this show at last confront the real horror of Anakin's actions in ROTS, but it also gives us a contrasting development in Reva. The Inquisitor was peer to the Jedi children Anakin butchered. She was inadvertently spared from the slaughter, and in her pursuit of vengeance is tempted to become a monster of Vader's own kind. Yet she is unable to bring herself to murder Luke for his father's deeds, and in sparing the child she spares herself from Anakin's fate. Reva"s entire function is to prove to the audience that, whatever Anakin claimed or felt, he absolutely had a choice not to commit the most heinous of crimes in the supposed pursuit of "cure" for his wife (and that he is responsible for her death as well is proof of enough that it was never his true motive, although I believe that he convinced himself that it was). The ultimate point is that there was NEVER a "good" Anakin and an "evil" Vader. There was always a deeply flawed boy and man called Anakin Skywalker, whose early traumas lead him to desire power above all things--power to determine his own fate, and yet we see him fall again and again into the emotional trap, the trauma of his past, which not only makes him erratic and unreliable, but lures him repeatedly into the service of others, this despite his claim to desire to rule (we always see him pursuing this kingship with or for others). That he cannot even concede his own identity, and thus his culpability in his own misery, means that he will remain a prisoner of a Mobius loop constructed of rage, sorrow, and dependence on a self-inflicted delusion that can only lead him deeper into confusion and darkness.

[scripttorture]

Hello, scripttraumasurvivors sent me your way- is there anything that would cause a character who's been a POW for the past ten years to be rescued and have no memory at all of who she is and where she came from before? (Including not being to able recognize her family) Could that happen?

The short answer I’mafraid is no.

 Memory problems relatedto trauma are very much real but that isn’t how they tend to manifest.

 There are two mainproblems, one related to memories of the past and the other related to formingnew memories. They usually happen together but can happen to different degrees.

 Past memories that aremost vulnerable are the most recentmemories. So survivors don’t forget their names or their families but they might forget some of the things that happenedin the previous year.

 In the most extremecase I read about (and this was a very particular sort of torture) a victimlost ten years worth of memories, but it was the most recent ten years of their life. They still rememberedtheir family and their childhood. Those are the memories that tend to bestrongest, they’re the things people just don’tforget.

 Problems with recentmemory aren’t just limited to forgetting what happened. There are also problemswith the accuracy of these memories.Torture and trauma survivors sometimes remember things that didn’t happen, ordidn’t happen in the way they remember.

 They often haveintrusive memories as well, that is particular intense, vivid memories ofparticular traumatic events that keep…popping into their minds.

 So a more realistic wayof dealing with memory loss would be for this character to remember her family,but have forgotten friends she made just before she was captured. She may haveforgotten big chunks of what happened in the camp and of what she did in thewar before she was captured.

 She might alsomis-remember details about things that happened in the camp. It could be littlethings like saying that a door was on the right hand side when in fact it’s onthe left. It could be forgetting the faces of some of the guards who tormentedher (I have a post that covers a study on this here). It could be mixingseveral memories together, for instance saying a guard spat at her and stoleher rations when in fact those were two separate incidents that she’sremembering as one.

 She might find that she’sconstantly reminded of bad things that she witnessed or experienced in thecamp.

 The second problem thatshe might have to deal with is formation of new memories.

 Survivors of tortureand trauma often have more difficulty remembering things in the day to day.This doesn’t have to be dramatic, but it means that she might find oh studyingfor a course more difficult than she would have before she was a POW. She mightget annoyed that she can never find her keys. She might start forgetting people’sphone numbers.

 Nothing I’m aware ofcan cause a victim to forget important long term memories from their childhoodwithout also erasing more recentmemories.

 Think of it like….clay.The longer a memory has been in someone’s head the more ‘set’ it is and theless likely it is to be removed. If it’s a younger memory it’s easier to scoopout.

 I realise that leavesyou in a bit of an awkward position plot wise. If you’re going for drama withinthe family a more realistic take would be having the character remember herfamily but want to avoid them.

 There are severalpossible motivations for that: she might be ashamed of herself and what she hadto do to survive, she might blame her family for what she’s gone through(especially if they encouraged her to join the military), she might find beingaround her family too emotionally overwhelming. She might just feel they can’tunderstand what she’s gone through and like she needs some space to heal.

 I hope that helps.

Disclaimer

[unwelcome-ozian]

[unwelcome-ozian]