My kids and I love watching scary movies, so I was excited when she asked if we could watch them Carrie On our next mother-daughter night. While the ’70s movie techniques had us laughing our heads off, the best (and, let’s be honest, hardest) part was uncovering the film’s poignant themes all together.
In the first scene, my daughter already said something like, Carrie doesn’t know what a period is? and, God, those girls are so mean. Carrie is seen in response to being savagely teased by a group of girls in a locker room shower, with blood running down her legs.
It wasn’t until Carrie’s overprotective and religious mother was introduced that my daughter began to understand why Carrie was so naive and timid. Still, she was surprised that Carrie’s mother wasn’t prepared for her first period—something my daughter and I had discussed before she had her period. We also had a lot of discussions about bullying.
What’s harder for me to explain is the mother’s trauma and mental instability and how it manifests into her abusive and controlling behavior towards Carrie.
But before the film reveals why Carrie’s mother behaves the way she does, we get a glimpse into the love life of one of the girls who has been viciously pursuing Carrie. It soon became apparent that Carrie wasn’t the only character in an abusive relationship.
In fact, the female villain portrays textbook signs of Stockholm Syndrome – laughing off her boyfriend’s verbal and physical abuse and even trying to please him. As much as I’d like to pause the movie and watch all When the topic of an abusive relationship came up (not our first time), I just looked at my daughter and waited. Say I was relieved because her response to what was happening was to give a knowing look back and say, “Bruh, no, I’m going to go,” That’s an understatement.
When we finally reach the scene where Carrie’s mother reveals her trauma (an allusion to rape) to her daughter, we watch in silence. Talking to my daughter about intergenerational trauma is new territory for me. So we ended up reflecting on how parents often try to hide their pasts and problems from their children, and how parents just try to work through their own emotions… but they don’t always do it right.
Because I was so impressed by this mother’s forthright confession, a few days later I consulted an expert to find out whether it was okay, or even beneficial, for parents to disclose their trauma to their children.
“I believe that if parents have done their best to heal the trauma […]it is helpful to share their experiences with children. They can speak from the perspective of personal experience about what they’ve learned, where their strengths lie, what they didn’t realize they had, and what they’ve learned. This kind of wisdom is priceless for a daughter; additionally, it helped to have the power to break an unspoken pattern in my family,” says mother-daughter therapist Hilary Mae.
Still, May recommends that parents wait until their children are at least 15 years old before disclosing their traumatic experiences. Not only are older children generally more emotionally able to absorb and interpret messages, May said, but messages can also be most impactful at this age.
Ultimately, whether to share these experiences is a decision only a parent can make, but taking the time to consider what’s at stake is a solid starting point.
