Generational trauma
We are a traumatised generation. No matter what generation you come from. So if you are a Gen Z, millennial, baby boomer all of us, we are traumatised.
To list a few? The pandemic, 9/11, Brexit (if you are British) the 2008/9 financial crisis, the death of George Flloyd, the war in Ukraine and the constant shooting of American kids in schools.
We’re traumatised. All of us and so we admit it. However there seems to be a dangerous narrative amongst black women that they will “be the generation that heals the generational trauma” I personally find it corrosive, arrogant and setting up a new generation of black mothers to fail. Why?
Because its essentially stating that you personally will be better at parenting than all your elders and your betters. Somehow, we believe that our parents were intrinsically selfish and we are wholly altruistic, that our elders are not our betters and that we can do what they can’t.
I don’t believe that. I believe we’ll simply screw up our children in a different way to the way our parents screwed us over. Take me for example.
I grew up without safety in my childhood. As a result I crave safe situations in all things, am usually last to spread my wings (when I do, I enjoy it.) and live life with a deep seated fear. My children, on the other hand will have a mother that seeks for them to have safety and encourages them to spread their wings, they will (hopefully) not experience relative poverty, as I have and they will have 2 completely devoted and present parents. Their lives will be as different to mine as night is from day. They will have different challenges. What if they find me stifling because I am constantly looking out for their safety rather than adventure? You see? The purest of intentions, but yet the hard reality is that they will be faced with different challenges than me because they are different to me and they value different things to me based on what I will/will not give them. It takes a certain arrogance that says that this generation will be the generation to heal all the past traumas of broken homes, poverty, inequality and global shocks through the “strength of their love alone” it’s a foolish narrative that love heals all. Wrong, time heals, love heals but both things take time I applaud all steps in the correct direction of love, however it is foolish in the extreme to suggest that we will make the world “kum bye ya” because of our love. It’s simply further down the crazy road of “ a good woman can heal a man” no. Therapy and self determination can heal a man. A woman can encourage a man to seek both but she can’t actually heal him. Another example is “sexual healing” that a woman’s vagina can heal a man. Really? Why is it a woman’s vagina can heal a man but her left arm can’t? Why does he need to get “lost” in her? It means by definition that he is lost, and you need to take the flags for what they are. Red. Red as hell. We are the generation that will take significant and conscious strides towards healing our society, one person at a time. Present parents (emotionally and physically) help create stable children. But they cannot work in isolation, you can be the best parents in the world, if you gave birth during the pandemic that is going to have an effect on your children. Nothing heals the pain of what the last 2 years did to us all overnight. Mummy can say all she likes “shh… It will be alright” but people dying in care homes and being buried in mass graves, with the mental health pandemic and the war in Ukraine, you can’t fix that. I’m not saying don’t try, I’m saying understand your limits.
Remember, progress not perfection.
Grace and Courage.
Annetta Mother Smith.