Robin Fivush

fewer symptoms like anger problems, substance abuse.

So there was something about being in a collaborative storytelling family that buffered them against some of the anxiety that we all experienced after 9-11.

So as you might imagine, military veterans who have seen combat come home, and it's very, very difficult for them to talk about their experiences for multiple reasons.

One, they themselves are traumatized.

They don't want to traumatize their listeners.

And frankly, their listeners don't always encourage combat.

wanting to hear about the awful things that had to happen.

We saw this with World War II vets, Holocaust survivors.

It's a general pattern of people who have experienced trauma.

We see it with refugee families.

But the veterans who came home

having experienced traumatic combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, the ones who knew more of their family history showed higher levels of adjustment and well-being than those who did not.

And again, it's some suggestion that having that as a buffer is helpful.

And I think it's because that tells you we're a family that perseveres.

We've been through hard times.

We've gotten through them.

We stay together.

We get through it.

This was an African-American family, and it shows how family stories can situate us not only in a family history, but in world history.

So this is a story about the civil rights movement and about this family's role in the civil rights movement.