Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast where we are focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community. Whether you’re a veteran, active duty, guard, reserve, or a family member, this podcast will share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio, and now let’s get on with the show.

Hey everyone, welcome back to Drive On. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio, and today my guest is Becky Ellis. Becky is the daughter of a highly decorated World War II combat sergeant and Authority in writing and the author of a touching memoir titled Little Avalanches. In her book, she gives an insightful account of the war fought at home by veterans families, which is often left untold.

And today we’ll discuss how families handle these experiences, uh, intergenerational trauma and the need for difficult [00:01:00] conversations within families. Uh, before we get into all that though, uh, first I want to welcome you to the show, Becky. Uh, really glad to have you here.

Becky Ellis: Well, I’m really happy to be here. Thank you for having me. I appreciate the work you do on this podcast.

Scott DeLuzio: Yeah, absolutely. Uh, and I appreciate you coming on and sharing, uh, some of the experiences that you and your, your family have kind of gone through and, uh, how that might be able to help some other folks, um, you know, kind of lessons learned from your experiences and how they can apply them to, uh, their own lives.

So, um, could you share with our listeners, some of your experiences kind of growing up as a daughter of a war veteran and how this influenced you, uh, as, as life went on?

Becky Ellis: Sure. Yeah. And I’ll do my best to be as helpful as I can. I think it’s important that we share our stories. So my dad was a combat Sergeant in World War II, just to give some context. He came back in 1945 and within [00:02:00] six years he got his college degree and became a doctor. And, um, I was, when he, when I was born, he was about 41.

So he had been back from the war for 20 years and was still living with PTSD. And one of the things that my father insisted was he wanted his kids to be tough as nails, tough as old nails, really. And he wanted us to be prepared and prepared for what we had no idea. Um, He did stuff like when I was little, I had my teeth drilled without Novocaine, we hid from fandom Nazis, I learned to shoot a gun at a really young age, and it was all stuff that was happening in my family and not happening in other families, and I sort of figured this out when I got to elementary school.

You know, other kids were having barbecues and swimming and learning to disco and roller skate. We weren’t doing that. Um, and so, but my dad didn’t talk about [00:03:00] anything. He didn’t, wouldn’t talk about the past, not five years ago, not five minutes ago. So we didn’t really understand why we were going through these hard things.

And I think that I became disassociative to survive, and I think that’s understand that, understand that concept better than anybody else. And I grew up to be really successful. It’s, it’s part of being tough. I was capable and competent and strident, and I could be all the things that are required for success in corporate America.

And I did that, and I had this really carefully curated life and I, Um, was tough and I was guarded. And what that meant was I was hiding. I was hiding from everybo...