Parental Trauma

A 17-year-old high school student leans against the wall on a chair. She feels trapped and anxious, ridden with a fear of making mistakes, so much so that she stops herself from embracing her full potential. “Due to how they [her parents] acted in the past, I feel like I’m never gonna get anywhere in life,” she expresses.(Azriel Badon)

Two friends mourning the barrier which now separates them. The interviewee explains how “it took a very conscious effort for me personally to decide that I didn’t want to replicate the same [harmful] pattern that I had witnessed and had knew about in my family, and then also to move away from a group of friends or [a friend] that had that sort of tendency.”(Azriel Badon)

A glass spills onto the concrete, now empty. From the perspective of a 16-year-old girl raised in an abusive and alcoholic household. “My dad was abusive because his dad was abusive and his grandparents were abusive and they lived in a military family full of alcohol and diabetes,” she explains. She expressed that “nothing changed” until she left that toxic environment.(Azriel Badon)