Jeannette Walls Post Traumatic

Traumatic events occur in all shapes and sizes. Traumatic events can influence a person’s life either in a positive way or a negative way. People can either make the best of what happened to them, or fall into a dark spiral downward—leaving some anxious or depressed. In the case of the Jeannette Walls, she tells the story of her ever chaotic and traumatic life as a child and young adolescent. Throughout her life she was exposed to being on fire, sexual assault, domestic violence, and many more traumatizing incidents. While these events are highly stressful and can cause severe mental problems, within the exposed person, Jeannette had the resilience to overcome and grow from the experiences her past had left her with. With every traumatic experience

The first happened when she was cooking food for herself on the stove, and she caught on fire. Instead of reacting how a “typical” three year-old would, if burned (never going near the stove or fire again), she did the exact opposite. Although she was covered in third-degree burns all over her body, she still went home and kept on cooking her food as if nothing had happened. “The neighbor lady who had driven me to the hospital was surprised that I didn’t run in the opposite direction from any fire I saw” (15). Here, she experienced post-traumatic growth because she did not fall back to the baseline, but exceeded it by being able to not feel afraid or distressed by the traumatic event that had occurred. As time passed, the traumatic events began to happen more frequently. The next traumatic experiences happened to all be forms of sexual assault. Beginning with the neighbor boy who inappropriately touched her, moving to her uncle fondling her, and ending with the stranger that climbed through her window into her bed—waking to him groping her. Finally, she found the courage to tell her mom about her uncle touching her, but her mother told her to brush it off and act as if it never had taken place. “She said that

Most of her life Jeannette spent living among poverty. Whenever her family moved, they always moved to areas of high poverty and low economic standing. In these communities a lot of trauma, similar to events she had experienced, happened. It was hard for her to get away from all the bad things that happened, since she was constantly submerged in communities with it. Thus being said, this ultimately contributed to her become resilient to a lot of the traumatic events she encountered later on. Since she had witnessed some already, she was prepared to handle others traumatic events that might arise in her future. For instance, one day the neighbor decided to shoot his BB gun at Jeannette’s house. “I yanked the pistol out of Lori’s hand, aimed low, and pulled the trigger” (88). After witnessing her father handle his gun, she knew what a plausible solution to the problem would be—using the gun to defend herself and siblings against the boy. This set her up for recovering faster when encountering these traumatic events because had already been exposed to so many. Additionally, her parents were constantly on the move. Being constantly on the move never really gave her a sense of having a community to identify with, so when traumatic events occurred, she never had anyone to talk to about it other than her family. This contributed to why she was so distraught when her