As a young boy, Westerville resident and author Brian Ahearn saw his father as a hero. He knew him as a charismatic Marine veteran and a successful businessman who loved to shoot pool at the bar with his friends.
But as he got older, Ahearn started to see that his father wasn’t much of a hero after all. He watched his father verbally and physically abuse his mother and be unfaithful to her. Eventually, his parents divorced, and his once-positive image of his father crumbled.
By educating himself on the impacts of trauma, Ahearn changed his outlook on his father and their relationship. His new book, His Story, My Story, Our Story: Eternal Lessons of Fatherhood, Sacrifice, and Service, shares his family’s story and guides others toward healing.
A deeper understanding
As an adult, Ahearn confronted his father about the abuse his mother endured. His father had since remarried, and Ahearn asked him how he’d feel if he were to hit his then-wife, just as he had hit Ahearn’s mother.
“He goes, ‘If I ever find out you laid a hand on her, I’m gonna f****** kill you.’ And I said, ‘What if you found out it was five years ago?’ He goes, ‘I don’t care, if I ever found out you touched her, I will f****** kill you,’” Ahearn says. “And I said, ‘Good, now you know how I feel about the divorce. It doesn’t matter that it was 12 years ago for me, it’s right now and I want answers.”
His father struggled to give him answers and Ahearn couldn’t begin to understand why his father acted the way he did until he read Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score, a widely read nonfiction novel discussing trauma and how it affects your brain, body and outward interactions.
After reading, Ahearn got emotional thinking about the inner turmoil his father must have experienced due to his time in the Marines.
“It dropped from the head to the heart,” he says. “If I had been 22, 23, and I had been in Vietnam and I had seen people getting killed, your whole world is just transformed by that. I don’t know that I would have acted any differently. I started to have much more empathy and grace for my father. It didn’t mean the things he did weren’t wrong, but who are we to judge if we don’t know how we would respond to that?”
Pondering further, he realized his father’s behavior was likely an expression of the pain he was harboring alone.
“People are going to process these events differently. Some of it’s socially unacceptable, right? Like physical abuse or not being faithful to the person that you’re married to,” he says. “It’s more socially acceptable in the creation of art, or physical activity. So what I took away from it is that some people have no other means of expression, and this is a picture of what’s happening with them.”
Rewriting the story
Ten years before he died, Ahearn’s father finally acknowledged that he had been living with post-traumatic stress disorder. He wrote about his experiences to share with Ahearn, as he worked to understand the mental state he had been living in for decades.
“I hope I’m a much better person a year, five, God willing, 10 years from now,” Ahearn says. “I hope I’m a much better person then than I am today, and I think he was definitely on that trajectory, as he kind of dealt with his demons and just tried to enjoy life.”
Ahearn was working on a letter to his father, but didn’t finish it before his passing. He then began writing his book, which was published this past June.
In the book, Ahearn writes about his experience as the son of a Marine veteran and the complexities that came along with that. He also appears on interviews and podcasts to discuss his book and advocate for mental health awareness.
Through these efforts, Ahearn started a chain reaction of healing for fathers and their sons.
“I had a podcast host who said, ‘I haven’t talked to my dad in years,’ but after we had our conversation on the show, I called him and I’m going to go out to Boise, Idaho and see him,” Ahearn says. “It’s a deeply, deeply personal look, and to know that it’s touching other people’s hearts is very gratifying.”
A new generation
Ahearn and his wife, Jane, have a daughter, Abigail, now 28.
In Ahearn’s father’s letter to him, he wrote about experiencing violence in his childhood. Ahearn noticed the dysfunctional dynamics and domestic violence he grew up with. He and Jane decided Abigail would grow up much differently, and they tried their hardest to break the cycle.
“Only a month or two ago, as my wife and I were hanging out with (our daughter), she just said, ‘You know what, I’ve had a good life. I love this neighborhood and where I grew up, and I know I’m loved, I’m secure, and all that,’” Ahearn says. “She said ‘I wouldn’t have done anything different if I were you guys.’”
While Ahearn’s experience growing up with his father had its negatives, there are a couple of values his father instilled in him that he has been able to pass on to Abigail: never quit and exercise self-discipline.
While in college, Abigail failed a class twice. Instead of throwing in the towel, she took the course again and passed.
“I’m more proud of that than any of the A’s that she might have gotten,” Ahearn says.
Healing our heroes
Ahearn hopes that, through his book, other veterans may learn from his father’s mistakes and examine their unhealed trauma. He includes information regarding how to start a conversation about getting help. He also discusses breaking the stigma surrounding treating mental health conditions.
He often uses professional athletes as examples. One such athlete is Olympic gymnast Simone Biles, he says, who openly shares her mental health challenges, showing us that even the best athletes in the world get help from mental health professionals.
“I like to say, let the air out of the balloon so you don’t burst and wonder why,” he says. “I think there should probably be proactive programs. … Not everybody will take to it. Some will think they don’t need it. But who knows how many you might catch who could possibly go the wrong way because they don’t have anyone else to talk to?”
Mental Health Resources:
- Suicide and Crisis Lifeline – dial 9-8-8 www.mha.ohio.gov
- Dial 2-1-1 www.211.org
- Adult Alcohol Drug and Mental Health Board of Franklin County www.adamhfranklin.org
- Mental Health America of Ohio, www.mhaohio.org
- NAMI Mid-Ohio, www.namimidohio.org
Domestic Violence Resources
- National Domestic Violence Hotline, 800-799-7233 or text BEGIN to 88788 www.thehotline.org
- Westerville Center for Family Safety and Healing, (614) 722-8293, www.familysafetyandhealing.org
- CHOICES for Victims of Domestic Violence (Franklin County – 24/7 crisis hotline), (614) 224-466, www.lssnetworkofhope.org/choices
- Where’s the Line Campaign, www.wherestheline.info
- Ohio Domestic Violence Network, www.odvn.org
Maisie Fitzmaurice is an editor at CityScene Media Group. Feedback welcome at mfitzmaurice@cityscenemediagroup.com.
