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

Jeannette encountered, she began learning from each event—helping her to become resilient and experience posttraumatic growth. The traumatic experiences began at the age of three.

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

sexual assault was a crime of perception. ‘If you don’t think that you’re hurt, then you aren’t,’ she said” (184). After she found no comfort or sympathy from her mother, she began to show symptoms associated with being sexually assaulted. Jeannette found herself withdrawn and anxious around males. Additionally, she began to become self-conscious and concerned with the way her body looked to other people. However, she quickly learned that she couldn’t go through her life being afraid of males because she faced them everyday. Thus, this realization helped her to see that being withdrawn and afraid got her nowhere in her life. By the age of ten, she became resilient to the majority of traumatic events that had happened. Furthermore, another traumatic experience that she encountered in her life was domestic violence. There were many times in her childhood where she witnessed her dad, who was also an alcoholic, beating her mom, siblings, and her. She has seen her dad go as far as almost tossing her mother out of a window, to running her mother over with a car. “Then mom’s feet appeared in the window, followed by the rest of her body” (71). Although these incidents happened, she was able to take the traumatic event and turn it into a positive outlook. She learned to forgive and not think of every bad event in her life as traumatizing, but something to learn from and move on. As she aged into her adult life, the traumatic experiences she encountered prompted her to write her book, The Glass Castle—allowing others to see that just because negative events happen to a person doesn’t mean they have to ruin a person’s entire life.
Although Jeannette seemed to make the most of her unfortunate childhood, many ramifications from her experiences came about that influenced the people around her. The people that she directly influenced were her family members. Her family either viewed these ramifications as positive consequences or negative consequences of what happened in her life. The consequences that left a positive mark from Jeannette’s traumatic experiences directly affected her siblings. They were the people exposed first hand to all the events that taken place over the course of her childhood. They, just like her with the exception of her youngest sister, had learned they were not living a healthy lifestyle. Jeannette was the sibling who really learned and grew from all the disturbing experiences. She was able to learn what techniques helped her cope the best and what didn’t techniques didn’t, when faced with certain traumatic events. She was the example setter for how her siblings should face trauma. Also, she was the family member that always encouraged her siblings to follow their dreams regardless of the traumatic events they were exposed to. “I was so proud of my brother on the day he was sworn in, standing there in the ranks of the new officers…”(274). By following in her footsteps, her older sister and younger brother learned to use resilience in their lives by overcoming their terrible childhood and pursuing their dreams of moving to New York City. Additionally, although her father and her were not always on the best of terms, he did see what she had done with her life as a good thing. Consequently, after all that had happened, her father viewed the consequences of all her traumatic events to only strengthen her to be the best she could be. On the other hand, her mother perceived Jeannette’s ramifications of her traumatic life in a negative way. Even though Jeannette found a better way, her mother did not favor this. She hated that her children viewed their childhood as traumatic and bad. She wanted them to acknowledge who they were, and not forget her past life. “ ‘Your father and I are who we are. Accept it.’ ” (5). This upset Jeannette, but she understood her ramifications affected everyone in her family differently.
Furthermore, social context also played an important role in how she responded to the traumatic events she faced.

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

mother told her to forget she had been sexually assaulted. She had no one else to turn to for comfort. Therefore, social context really plays a viable role in how a person responds to traumatic events, and if not given the proper environment to thrive in, it can leave a petrifying impression on their psyche.
Fortunately for Jeannette, after everything she had been through in her life she was able to turn her life around, and live the life she strived for as a child. Her traumatic events not only influenced her to be a better person than her parents, but also made a lasting impression on her siblings. While her social environment was not the greatest, she learned to make the best of where she was situated. Though many traumatic experiences caused her some physical and emotional setbacks, she never did hit rock bottom. Instead, she overcame and grew from her experiences by being resilient and exhibiting posttraumatic growth despite all the traumatic events she had confronted. Therefore, her traumatic events influenced her life in a positive way.