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Jackie Kennedy: PTSD and a Remarkable Fighting Spirit
The History Reader ^ | J. Randy Taraborrelli

Posted on 09/14/2025 11:06:09 AM PDT by CondoleezzaProtege

In July 1964, Jackie Kennedy visited her mother and stepfather, Janet and Hugh Auchincloss, at the family’s homestead, Hammersmith Farm in Newport. She was suffering greatly. It had been just eight months since she witnessed the murder of her husband, John F. Kennedy, in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

One afternoon during this visit, Jackie dragged herself down to the beach to join Janet and her son (Jackie’s half-brother), Jamie Auchincloss, under an umbrella. She looked dreadful, medicated, and hungover. Janet was as annoyed as she was worried. “Jacqueline,” she began—and this is according to Jamie’s memory of the conversation—“we’ve all lost Jack, but it’s been eight months! You have to snap out of it.” Janet then reached for her daughter’s hand and said, “The only way you’ll ever get through this thing is to start living your life again in a normal fashion. Do we have an understanding?” Jamie recalled, “Jackie was a little startled. She blinked a few times and said, ‘Thank you, Mummy.”

Later, Jackie said of that moment, “I needed to get on with things and Mummy knew it. How remarkable. How remarkable is that?”

But after just eight months, she was expected to get over it?

(Excerpt) Read more at thehistoryreader.com ...


TOPICS: History
KEYWORDS: assassination; jackiekennedy; kennedy; moms; ptsd; trauma
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To: Navy Patriot

I’m talking about his Potics, not his personal life.


21 posted on 09/14/2025 11:36:50 AM PDT by cowboyusa ( YESHUA IS KING OF AMERICA AND HE WILL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE HIM!)
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To: drSteve78

Thanks for the compliment. Appreciate it.


22 posted on 09/14/2025 11:40:50 AM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

Fed up with his philandering, Jackie secreted a spring gun up the sleeve of her pink suit coat, a .38 derringer.
When no one was looking she slapped her forearm, quickly popped him—right in the melon—then tried to escape over the Lincoln’s trunk where she was arrested by SS agent Clint Johnson.
True story jack.


23 posted on 09/14/2025 11:41:32 AM PDT by tumblindice (America's founding fathers: all armed conservatives)
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To: Liz
> Jack told him he would never quote Jefferson in a presidential speech b/c of the man's antipathy towards Catholics.

Maybe. But JFK had a lot of respect for Jefferson. He famously said:

"I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone."

-- Address at a White House dinner honoring Nobel Prize winners (29 April 1962), quoted in The White House Diary, at the JFK Library


24 posted on 09/14/2025 11:41:37 AM PDT by dayglored (This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. Psalms 118:24)
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To: DallasBiff

He wasn’t a book publisher - he was a diamond dealer and highly respected. I’ve heard his marriage had been dead a long time before Jackie. And who cares if they weren’t married - it’s not like they were going to have kids together.

Her behavior right after the assassination was without parallel. I don’t begrudge her finding happiness.


25 posted on 09/14/2025 11:42:57 AM PDT by Aria (Voted for Trump 2016, 2020 & 10/22/2024 )
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To: cowboyusa
OK.

It is obvious my comment was a response to a comment disrespecting Jackie.

26 posted on 09/14/2025 11:48:09 AM PDT by Navy Patriot (President Trump Decisively Won Popular & E.C., Celebrate Recivilization!)
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To: Aria

I always felt that she had found a special happiness with Tempelsman. I was glad she had that at the end.


27 posted on 09/14/2025 11:52:04 AM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: cowboyusa; dayglored

Thomas Jefferson was deeply hostile toward the Catholic Church as an institution. He viewed its doctrines as a distortion of Jesus’s original message, its hierarchy as a threat to republican government, and its historical persecution as a model of tyranny.

Jefferson’s opposition to Catholicism was rooted in three main areas:
Theological disagreements: Jefferson was a Deist who admired Jesus’s moral teachings but rejected core Christian doctrines like the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and the resurrection. He believed that priests had corrupted Jesus’s simple, ethical message with “mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods,” and he saw the Catholic Church as the original source of these distortions. In his view, reason was the ultimate authority in matters of faith, not church tradition or dogma.

Political beliefs: Jefferson feared the political power of religious institutions and their potential to undermine republican government. He saw the Catholic Church’s hierarchical structure and history of entanglement with monarchies as fundamentally at odds with the principles of self-government and individual liberty. He viewed the historical record of the Church’s persecution as a dangerous example of what happens when religious leaders are given political power.

Animosity toward clergy: Jefferson had a general distrust of the clergy of all denominations, viewing them as a corrupting force motivated by a hunger for power. He saw them as having perverted religion for their own gain. His famous push for the separation of church and state was, in part, a reaction against what he saw as the oppressive influence of religious leaders on government.
Contextualizing Jefferson’s anti-Catholicism

A product of his time: Jefferson’s views were not unique. As a man of the Enlightenment, he shared a common anti-Catholic prejudice with many Protestant intellectuals of the 18th century, who saw Catholicism as authoritarian and irrational.

Support for religious freedom: Despite his personal views, Jefferson was a steadfast advocate for religious freedom for all, including Catholics. In the 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, he specifically wrote that a person’s religious opinions should not “diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities,” and he resisted efforts to amend the bill to exclude certain faiths.

Separation of church and state: Jefferson’s commitment to the separation of church and state was designed to prevent any religious group—including the Catholic Church, which he saw as a historically oppressive force—from gaining a dominant position in government. He believed that true religion flourished best without government interference.


28 posted on 09/14/2025 11:53:34 AM PDT by Liz (May you be in Heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead (Irish blessing))
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To: DallasBiff

Appears to me to be pretty much “normal” behavior within that strata of society.


29 posted on 09/14/2025 11:53:48 AM PDT by ChildOfThe60s (If you can remember the 60s, you weren't really there)
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To: DallasBiff
How does one get over having their husband's blood and brain matter spattered all over them? Even Mrs. Lincoln went a bit crazy after her husband was assassinated next to her, to the point that her oldest and only remaining son Robert Lincoln had her put in a nuthouse.

The bios I have read of Jackie say she married Onassis because she believed he could protect her and her children from the public and the violence in America. I won't begrudge a young woman with two young children, seeking a safer life out of politics after her husband and brother-in-law were assassinated, even if it meant a marriage to an older man from another country who could afford to protect her.

She began keeping company with Templesman five years after Onassis died in 1980. Maurice left his wife in 1984. They never divorced. Templesman's daughter Rena was married to Robert Speisman, an executive vice president of Lazare Kaplan International Inc. He died on Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. Tempelsman died of complications from a fall at Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan on August 23, 2025, three days before his 96th birthday.

I also won't begrudge her the comfort and companionship of Templesman in her later years, and especially during the last years of her life. I'm a 78 year old divorced woman who raised two sons alone. My life was the complete opposite of Jackie Kennedy's. I wouldn't have wanted to have had her life. It wasn't a very happy one. She was 11 when her parents divorced. Her mother married Hugh Auchincloss two years later, and when he died, she married Bingham W. Morris, three years later. I grew up in a normal home. My parents were married for not quite 50 years when my father died.

Everyone is different. Their needs are different. I wouldn't judge Jackie or any other woman in a similar situation about the choices in their lives. They are after all, the ones who will have to live with those decisions, not me.

Unless you've walked in someone else's shoes, you have no idea of their mindset or their personal sufferings. She lost two children as infants. It's a miracle the two that did survive, didn't die while she was still alive. As a mother, my only goal in life now, is not to outlive my children.

30 posted on 09/14/2025 11:54:13 AM PDT by mass55th (“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” ― John Wayne)
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To: mass55th

Yes; but I think Mrs. Lincoln may have always been a little ‘off’.


31 posted on 09/14/2025 11:56:02 AM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: DallasBiff

Jealous?


32 posted on 09/14/2025 11:58:40 AM PDT by Az Joe (Live free or die)
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To: CondoleezzaProtege

The Queen Victoria model is also available... continue public mourning for the rest of your life.


33 posted on 09/14/2025 12:03:45 PM PDT by ChronicMA
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To: Jamestown1630
"Yes; but I think Mrs. Lincoln may have always been a little ‘off’."

Well, she was from a family of slave owners. Three of her half-brothers fought on the side of the Confederacy. Two of them died in battle. The third was injured. Her youngest half-sister Emilie Todd Helm was married to Confederate General Benjamin Hardin Helm who was killed at the Battle of Chickamauga. President Lincoln gave special orders to allow Emilie to come visit her older sister at the White House. Having a Confederate widow in the White House was controversial, and Union politicians condemned Lincoln for the visit. To Lincoln, however, Emilie’s presence was a calming influence upon Mary, who was also mourning the recent death of one of their sons. Again, the Lincolns suffered the loss of two sons. One in Springfield, and the other in the White House. Tad Lincoln, their youngest died six years after his father. Their oldest son Robert, was not a comforting factor in Mary's life. He looked upon her as an embarrassment.

34 posted on 09/14/2025 12:07:05 PM PDT by mass55th (“Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.” ― John Wayne)
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To: Liz

Jefferson was a Deiest, and not Born Agai. But he was still inspired by GOD to write the Decleration.


35 posted on 09/14/2025 12:08:13 PM PDT by cowboyusa ( YESHUA IS KING OF AMERICA AND HE WILL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFO n9t born againRE HIM!)
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To: ChronicMA

I knew a couple of old spinsters who had lost their fiancés in WWI and never married. It wasn’t unusual for young women of their time; and it may have been productive for a royal life of Victoria’s time.

I don’t know useful or life affirming it is for most regular people, especially in our time.


36 posted on 09/14/2025 12:14:51 PM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: ChronicMA; Jamestown1630

Victoria may have publicly mourned Albert lifelong, but she had John Brown in private.


37 posted on 09/14/2025 12:34:18 PM PDT by ryderann
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To: ryderann

Do we have proof of how far that went? In those days, people often carried on romantic relationships that never went beyond the romance.

In addition to an almost sick preoccupation with death, people of that era were very romantic and sentimental.


38 posted on 09/14/2025 12:38:32 PM PDT by Jamestown1630 ("A Republic, if you can keep it.")
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To: cowboyusa
I don't buy that. He was a good RAT and would have morphed like they all do. Low values. No scruples. Narcissistic personality disorder. Compulsive womanizer.
39 posted on 09/14/2025 12:58:35 PM PDT by LouAvul (1 John 2:22: Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist.)
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To: LouAvul

What matters is what his Polotics were at the time. I doubt he would have lived past 55.


40 posted on 09/14/2025 2:09:51 PM PDT by cowboyusa ( YESHUA IS KING OF AMERICA AND HE WILL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFO n9t born againRE HIM!)
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