03/24/2024
My great-grandmother died in when my grandmother was just a little girl leaving her to tend to younger siblings when she was just a child herself. This is how HER started. While I regret never asking her questions about how that experience shaped her before she passed, I imagine the trauma and sacrifices she had to endure as a motherless child transformed how she would later mother her own children, my own mother in particular.
I never lacked in love from these two women but only as an adult woman myself did I learn about how trauma and pain transmute through generations. My sweet orphaned grandmother was a survivor with deep wounds, yet I was raised to see her in the grandest light. If she had flaws and shortcomings, I didn't see them.
My mother was raised under an unconscious shadow of old wounds that never healed. No one saw through it because basic needs were met. I imagine my own mother needed a mother too. I wish I had realized this sooner, but I myself had to fend for my own sanity and survival from early on. To no fault of the women who raised me... we were all just living under the chains of generational pain passed down by subconscious memories of things too horrible to speak of now.
My body is made up of the same wounded memories the women in my life endured, but the chains no longer contain me. I searched for healing by coming face to face with the darkness that followed us. I was set free and in that swift motion set the generation before me free as well.
Oftentimes, during my 6 year infertility journey I found solace in thinking that I couldn't be a mother without first doing the inner work. Outwardly, it looked like changing my diet, exercising, taking supplements, and eliminating toxins, but truly, my biggest, most proud work has been healing the in my family. THIS is my legacy.
I don't know if I'll ever be a "good mom" but I do know that the trauma stops with me and the generation coming forth is unbound and healed.
