ABSTRACT
This chapter explores family estrangement through the lens of the trauma of transgenerational abandonment. Applying the notion of family hand-me-downs, the author makes use of speculative (real and imagined) autoethnography (Purnell, 2015), to situate relational stories from five family generations. These speculative, relational stories are impacted by traumatic memories, buried deep as affective, psychic, shame-binds. Embodied shame is transmitted down through the generations, as cultural and family scripts—by family members who have become haunted by shameful secrets and silences. Sometimes these ghostly scripts occur unconsciously, and other times, consciously. Breaking the silence of family secrets is never easy. The author hopes that writing trauma stories (relational and speculative) through imagination, adding just a touch of reality, stories can become the impetus for identification and empathy bringing with it the possibility of repairing broken relationships, disconnected by the impact of transgenerational trauma of abandonment. It is only by healing the wounds of the past, bought on by family estrangement, that new relational stories may unfold ending stories of embodied, toxic shame, so that new relationships can flourish.
