Over the weekend we were camping at a campground that I camped at many times when I was a kid. Friday night I was sitting outside by the campfire by myself toasting marshmallows. Yes, I am almost 40 years old, but I still love it.

While I was out there, I had a flood of memories come back about all the times that we had camped there before. I remembered how the mom of one of my friends would toast her marshmallows charred black on the outside and raw on the inside. We camped in big groups of ten or fifteen families at a time, and I remembered how we kids would put on skits for the adults. This campground is where I found out Elvis died. Memory after memory hit me.

This made me think of things on a couple of different levels. For our kids with PTSD little memory like this can start a spiral of memories that they would rather forget. These can be memories of abuse, neglect, verbal insults and various other things. Maybe camping to them means that they were burnt with sticks. You never know what is going to spark a memory, and you have no idea how your child is going to react to that memory. The child may not even be able to tell if the memory is real or a nightmare. You may see a downward spiral in your child’s behavior and have no idea why. Your child may not be able to verbalize why they are feeling the way they are. It is very hard on parents to be able to deal with these out of the blue emotions and memories. This afternoon I am feeling very melancholy but I am not sure if it’s because our weekend vacation is over and I’m back to scraping tile and adhesive off my kitchen floor, or because I have left a place that held so many good memories for me. We have camped at this campground a couple of times in the last few years, but I never had the flood of memories like I did this weekend. It just goes to show you never know what’s going to set it off.

I was raised in a manner similar to the kids I parent. I was physically and sexually abused up until I was about 10 years old. I was emotionally abused up until I was 35 and started to stand up for myself. I don’t have many good memories of my childhood, and it’s the same for our kids. We hang on to these few good memories as if they are as precious as gold. After my memories came, I went into the cabin we were staying in and shared them with my husband. He knows what my childhood was like and that these good memories are rare.

My husband pointed out that these were the few times that I was treated with affection, because the other parents in our group were kind to me, and because we were in public.

My 40th birthday is coming up in three weeks. I will be spending it in a manner very similar to all those times camping as a child. We will be joining our church family as seventeen families camp together. My birthday falls on the last day of our time together and most everyone knows it is my birthday. I will get to build new memories with my family, as well as share some of that same “old” fun. I hope I can give my children the gift of good memories just like these.



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