The Trauma I Didn't Know I Had
Author of the Month
September 7, 2026
Tammy Adler Foeller, Author, Founder & Executive Director, OpenDoor Women's Recovery Alliance
Tom O'Connor, Publisher
For most of my life, I thought trauma belonged to other people. It never occurred to me that I was living with unresolved trauma. I thought it belonged to veterans returning from war and survivors of abuse, violence, addiction, and tragedy.
I thought it belonged to the women referred to us at OpenDoor Women's Recovery Alliance. It certainly didn't belong to me.
As I began studying trauma more deeply through my work, I found myself unsettled by the ways it shapes the human experience. I learned about the nervous system, adverse childhood experiences (ACE), attachment, and the long-lasting impact of unresolved pain. I listened to the stories of women recovering from addiction, trafficking, incarceration, and homelessness.
I learned that trauma is not simply an emotional wound; it actually changes the way the brain develops and functions. Chronic stress and traumatic experiences can affect areas of the brain responsible for decision-making, emotional regulation, memory, impulse control, and the ability to assess risk. What may appear from the outside as poor choices, self-sabotage, or a lack of motivation is often the nervous system adapting to survive overwhelming circumstances.
The more I learned, the more I understood that many of the women we serve were not broken. Their brains and bodies had learned to do exactly what they were designed to do: protect them. The challenge was that survival strategies that once kept them safe were now standing in the way of healing, healthy relationships, and long-term recovery.
And then something unexpected happened. I began to see myself. Not in the dramatic stories of trauma, but in the patterns. The hyper-responsibility. The need to keep everyone happy. The discomfort with conflict. The tendency to feel responsible for other people's emotions. The belief that if everyone around me was okay, then I could finally relax. As I reflected on where those patterns came from, my thoughts returned to my mother.
Holocaust Survivor
My mother is a Holocaust survivor. She raised my brother, sister, and me while carrying wounds that were never fully healed and questions that were never fully answered. I spent most of my life focused on what happened to her, never considering how those experiences might have shaped me.
Intergenerational Trauma
The realization that trauma can be passed from one generation to the next has stopped me in my tracks. It has caused me to revisit memories, family dynamics, and lifelong patterns with new eyes. What I am discovering is both painful and illuminating. This awakening has shaken me to my core, not because it has changed my love for my mother, but because it has deepened my understanding of both her struggles and my own.
Although both of my mother's parents survived the Holocaust, many of those they loved did not. Grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and countless others were lost. The grief they carried was unimaginable.
Interestingly, some of the deepest wounds my mother carried were not only from what happened during the war, but from what she never knew afterward. Her parents never spoke about their experiences. Questions about the war, their escape, and her earliest years were off limits. Silence became the family language around the very events that had shaped their lives.
As a result, my mother grew up with more questions than answers. Most of the details of her own story are still unknown. Where exactly was she born? She does not have a birth certificate. How did her family survive? What dangers did her parents face to keep her alive? How did they escape? Who helped them? Many children were hidden in plain sight by Christian families. Was she one of those children? Is that why, as a child, she always loved the church bells when she arrived in America? Where did they hide? How did they find their way to a refugee camp in Germany? And how did they reunite? These questions are haunting.
We have a single photograph of her as a young child in a refugee camp in Germany. One photograph. Who took it? How did her parents get it? How did it make it to the US?
What I have come to understand is that trauma is not only carried through the stories we hear. Sometimes it is carried through the stories we are never allowed to tell and the questions we are never allowed to ask.
Most of us build our identity around the stories we are told. We know where we came from. We hear family stories around dinner tables and holiday gatherings. We understand our place in a larger narrative.
My mother was left with fragments. Which means I am left with fragments. The silence became part of her story. And mine.
As I have learned more about trauma, I have come to understand that trauma is not always what happens to us. Sometimes it is what is never spoken. Sometimes it is the uncertainty, the missing pieces, and the questions that never receive answers.
The effects of that silence ripple into the next generation.
Growing up, I never would have described myself as someone impacted by trauma. Compared to what my mother endured, that felt almost inappropriate. But trauma is not a competition. The nervous system does not compare suffering. It simply adapts.
I learned from the emotional environment I grew up in. I learned what felt safe from my mom. I learned what I believed was dangerous from my mom.
And, without realizing it, I became a caretaker. A peacemaker. Someone who felt responsible for making sure everyone else was okay. Those traits served me well in many ways. They helped me build relationships, raise a family, and lead an organization.
But they also came at a cost.
The more I understand trauma, the more I recognize that some of the qualities I once considered personality traits may have been survival strategies passed quietly from one generation to the next.
And yet, this realization has not filled me with blame. It has filled me with compassion. Compassion for my mother, who has spent a lifetime carrying questions that will never be answered. Compassion for her parents, who endured horrors I cannot begin to imagine. And compassion for myself, as I continue learning that healing begins not when we judge our responses, but when we understand them.
Today, the work I do at OpenDoor is rooted in this understanding. Every woman who walks through our doors carries a story. Some know every chapter. Others carry missing pages. Many have lived through experiences that taught them not to trust, not to hope, and not to ask for help.
What I have learned is that healing rarely begins with solutions. It begins with being seen. It begins with understanding how the past continues to shape the present. And sometimes, it begins with realizing that the trauma we thought belonged to someone else has been quietly influencing our own lives all along.
This is the first lesson trauma has taught me. Our stories do not begin with us. But healing can.
Read Tammy's bio by clicking her icon at the start of this article.
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