This was devastating she was embarking on the biggest accomplishment of her career and the desire to share it with her mother.  Unfortunately, that dream was not going to come true. 

As Wendy worked on projects from her professors she also wrote her mother’s obituary.  Tough as it was, Wendy needed to honor her mother and her legacy.  She thought of her father who never got the recognition he deserved as an Army pilot in the military during the Korean War. Wendy’s father suffered from PTSD and his trauma was displaced onto his wife.  Raising eleven children and also experiencing violence in the home, Wendy’s mother endured hidden trauma no one ever asked or talked about.  

Wendy wonders what life would be like if her doctor, extended family, neighbors asked her about her bruises (at least the ones they could see).  Wendy recalls asking her mother, as an adult, why she never left her father, and she said with so much pain in her voice “Lady, if I left you would not be born.”