In trauma therapy I processed the most traumatic memories from childhood, one of which was all the times I, as the eldest child, was forced to sit in the front passenger seat and navigate for my dad. This was way before navigation systems and Internet-based directions existed, and navigation had to be by paper map.
I'm not sure how much training I got, or if that even mattered, as the high pressure situation of navigating on paper as real-world roads unfolded led me inevitably to make mistakes, or to hesitate for fear of making mistakes. And every time my dad made to pull over I knew I was in for a world of hurt - that I would be verbally berated or physically assaulted.
Processing this category of memories involved remembering, less the particulars of any one incident, but the feelings of terror and high-strung pressure that I had had no place to express at the time. I also grieved that this younger me, which forms the inner child that I carry around within, never deserved to be put in this kind of situation, subsumed in unnamed terror with no outlet, without the room to make any mistakes.
Occasionally my brain would paint a picture of the past I would've wanted to have instead, and while processing this memory what it did was zoom out from the tension and fear within the car pulled over on the side of the road, and basked in the beautiful sunset surrounding the scene. If only the focus had been different - taking the wrong turn is nothing compared to missing the sunset.
So two weeks ago, when I was in China seeing my dad for the first time in over five years, I had to remark on the stark difference in experiences - again I sat in the front seat (though not exclusively), but instead of me forced to navigate, he used GPS on his phone. And at one point he did take the wrong turn, which I caught soon enough that I probably could have prevented, but I sat back and let him make the mistake, since I didn't see it as my responsibility. And the GPS should have recalculated a new route, but it got stuck, and my dad pulled over on the side of the road - not to blame me or anyone else, but to reset the GPS himself before resuming the drive.
I couldn't help but take a photo of the sunset outside.
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I wish the story ended there, but it doesn't. That was only the first day, and soon all of us were roped into navigating him via GPS - making sure he went into the right lanes as the roads diverged, or didn't miss upcoming turns.
On our last day with him, we journeyed to 太湖/Taihu Lake, and when we finally arrived, he got angry that the tourist destinations weren't easily found or open, and that us children were useless in not having a plan of destinations to visit, nevermind that we told him from the start that we didn't care where we went. He resented that he needed to be responsible for everything, and at one point he declared that it was a waste to raise us when we couldn't do anything. Knowing better, I wondered aloud what triggered him, and my sister Iris answered that he was probably hungry, and thirsty, and tired, and unable to manage any uncertainties.
And in that moment my most recent trigger in Costa Rica came to mind, because there I had felt activated and had chosen to hold the issue to address later, only to run into hanger and overstimulation and end up sobbing alone in the rental car. And it impressed upon me just how intergenerational trauma runs, that it's no surprise that my triggers aren't random, or even confined just to my own life experience - it's genetic, it's how generations were acted on and in turn acted onto the next. Tracing this back allowed me to see what I inherited and unconsciously suffered from for so long, the perfectionism, lack of nurturing, crushing sense of responsibility, self-abnegation, dissociation from even the most basic of bodily needs.
It's powerful to have healed so much from where I/we began, and to see how deeply it ran meant I was able to appreciate the magnitude of change all the more. I had wanted to end on the sunset, but it turns out that me sunsetting these traumas is yet another beauty worth beholding.