the 1928 hurricane didn't make my family "stronger"

this is an email from my aunt. i had sent her a note comparing the mess in NOLA to a nuclear bomb.

she writes back:

"I had a migraine. First time in a couple of years. The pain wasn't so bad, it's the brain thing that messed me up: words and spelling goofy. Like a stroke. Started I think because I couldn't get Bush's comment that we will "come out stronger from this experience" off my mind. Mother's having made it through the 1928 hurricane with nothing but the clothes she was wearing and having her house washed away didn't make her stronger. It contributed to the poverty that led to her and her siblings being put in separate foster homes. It led to the fear and distrust of life itself that she passed on to me and from which I have worked so hard to overcome. Yes, like a nuclear bomb."

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Save the Gulf:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=106&topic_id=22507&mesg_id=22507

Then save the nation!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/electionreform.htm

such things.

grandmother and mother. i was finally able to pull myself out and i'm just now realizing that my sucess was largely b/c of not having that fear my aunt speaks of. something i was punished for constantly as a child -- you know -- swimming too far out; going off on my bike for long stretches; and worst of all -- getting a classical education instead of a vocational track degree like teaching. i drove my family crazy with my esprit and i never once suffered for it.

Gavleston was the probably richest city in America at that time. Six thousand people were killed, the city totally destroyed. The city never can back.

... not because of a disaster, but because the feds thought they were spies, and so they were interned along with all the other Japanese-Americans and Canadians in ramshackle camps.

It made a horrible impression on my mom. One moment they were working or lower-middle-class families, with houses and businesses. The next, they were nonpersons, with a suitcase each, being herded to god-knows-where. To this day, she's afraid to board a train, and the sight of dirt and squalor (they were forced to stay in a filthy livestock barn with manure and maggots) freaks her out. The glimpses on the news, of those poor people at the Superdome, have made her physically ill.

My dad is pretty tough, but he says that seeing stuff like this makes him think he's a scared teenager again -- separated from his family at gunpoint, and trucked up north to do hard labor on a road crew.

A lot of people in my family just won't talk about their experiences -- not even to their kids and grandkids. When the Bushes go on about how life will be much nicer for the "underprivileged" people who were rescued, and how it will make people stronger ... I have to wonder if they've ever been in this kind of situation themselves, because I sure haven't heard my folks talking like that.

Fear and shame. That's what they remember.

it's a trauma. any trauma has its effects forever, one of them being loss of trust. trauma even effects our brains physiologically. so i'm not surprised she wrote this. doesn't make it any less powerful, though, to hear. thanks again.

GOP for many generations...

I am sorry to hear that your family went through that flood, I hope to god they did not go through this.