My ‘Who Do I Think You Were?®’ Series: Books Exploring Childhood Trauma and Family History

I’ve published three books, two that show how psychological theory can deepen our understanding of family history:

‘Yet’: A Story of Triumph Over Childhood Separation, Trauma, and Disability (2025) is a father-daughter memoir chronicling my father Harry Drabble’s journey through bovine tuberculosis, institutionalisation, and resilience in post-war Britain. It is a powerful account of the diagnosis and treatment of childhood bovine tuberculosis (1930s-1950s), exploring how childhood trauma and family history shaped multiple generations. Read the first two chapters here.

A Victorian’s Inheritance (2020) examines intergenerational trauma, addiction, anxiety, and depression through the life of my Victorian grandfather, Walter Parker. By combining genealogical research with psychological theory and neuroscience, this book reveals how historical experiences create psychological inheritance that reverberates through generations. Read the first two chapters here.

A Victorian Recipe Book in Facsimile: Mary Allott’s Handwritten Book of Household Receipts (2024, second edition 2027), previously published as A Facsimile Reproduction of a Victorian Recipe Book: A Handwritten Book of Family Receipts Started by Mrs C. A. Allott of Sheffield, (England), 1860, is the first volume in a three-book box set that reconstructs Mary Allott’s Victorian life through her handwritten recipe book. This remarkable document became testimony to survival after abandonment, evidence of competence in a society that blamed women for marital failure, and a record of the female networks that sustained women through crisis and beyond.

I’m currently completing Mary Allott’s biography, transforming domestic documentation into a vivid reconstruction of one Victorian middle-class woman’s life. Find out more and join the waitlist here.

How I Work

My work combines two of my greatest passions: my background in counselling and my extensive experience in genealogy and family history. I read historical evidence in the light of what psychology has established about how people are shaped by what happens to them, and how the effects reach the generations that follow, so that what a relative lived through can be recognised as an instance of something well documented rather than as something that happened only to them.

My research reveals that no family tree is without anxiety, trauma, loss, addiction, or depression transmitted across generations. However, our ancestors might equally be endowed with optimism, gratitude, resilience, intelligence, talent, kindness, humour, the ability to forgive, and the capacity to love. Understanding this psychological inheritance can illuminate our ancestors whilst giving us the language to consider our own thoughts, beliefs, and behaviour.

My Approach

Whilst writing is a passion project rather than an income source, I approach it with professional rigour – using strategic marketing, speaking engagements, and direct sales to sustain my research and publishing work. My ultimate aim is to create enduring printed family histories for both my own family branches and public archives, whilst raising awareness of often-overlooked historical experiences, from bovine tuberculosis’s devastating impact to the complex realities of Victorian middle-class women’s lives.

Through meticulous archival research, walking in my ancestors’ footsteps, and consulting with academic historians, I demonstrate how family historians can produce work of genuine historical significance. My methodology emphasises that oral family stories, whether factually accurate throughout or not, form part of the family’s narrative and deserve to be documented.

Why Family History Matters for Mental Health

Research shows that family history can be a powerful antidote against adverse life experiences:

• Family history builds resilience by showing us how our ancestors overcame disaster and survived tough times
• Children with a strong ‘intergenerational sense’ demonstrate greater self-confidence
• Sharing family stories has a positive impact on all family members, especially on adolescent identity and wellbeing
• Understanding ancestral experiences can help determine and challenge the effect of inheritance on mental health

All of us have ancestors who overcame war, poverty, trauma, and pandemics. Learning their stories helps us see that we too can survive. My work shows how developing an understanding of why people behaved as they did can promote self-awareness and encourage families to break painful cycles of difficulty whilst honouring inherited strengths.

Connect with Me

I invite you to join me in exploring hidden narratives. I write about family history and childhood trauma, helping readers understand how ancestral experiences shape families. Whether you’re passionate about family history, psychology, mental health, or Victorian social history, I would be delighted to hear about your discoveries.

For family historians and groups: I give talks to family history societies and local history groups. [To book a talk, get in touch below.]

For readers: Scroll down to subscribe to my newsletter for reader discounts, insights into how family history shapes us, and updates on forthcoming publications.

Get in touch: helen@helenparkerdrabble.com

I’m a proud Full Member of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars.

I’m a proud member of the Alliance of Independent Authors. (Ad: this is an affiliate link, so I receive a commission if you join through it.)

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“As soon as we die, we enter into fiction… once we cannot speak for ourselves, it is up to others to interpret us.” — Dame Hilary Mantel