The Reclaimed Heart: Generational Sickness
My best friend has a saying "Secrets keep you sick." And it's powerful and poignant in its simplicity, its depth, and its truth. Secrets do indeed keep you sick.
My family has pretty sick roots. The deepest of which I only recently discovered.
I remember as a child getting together with my older relatives for a backyard barbecue or birthday party and having an aunt or my grandmother telling me to not go into the house alone. I didn't understand that as a girl. Why should I be afraid? This is our relative's home! It's not huge, I won't get lost, I'm a good kid, there is no danger here.
In my adulthood, I learned why that was. One of my great uncles managed to molest two of my aunts, one of whom ended up molesting my cousin, her own child, (which I never would have known if my cousin was not brave enough to trust me with that story).
Nobody talked about it. In fact, if you were to bring it up, it might even be flatly denied. But the wounds that were inflicted are prevalent. The horror and the vileness of these acts remained hidden from me, whether it was to protect my innocence or, as I am starting to discover, was more to protect the family from shame (the irony).
I only learned of these stories because my cousins were brave enough to tell them. I am certain that there are other dark stories beneath my family tree, rotting the roots and making the whole tree sick, if we are not careful.
I wrote this poem after reflecting on all of this as well as the sickness and trauma inflected on my people, those as the original inhabitants of the place we now know as the USA and those who were forcibly brought here.
I wrote this as a reminder to myself that whatever sickness that has come passed down to me, I have the authority and the right to reject it and to stop it here in my own generation. I have the responsibility and the opportunity to stop it here, with me, so that my children will never be so painfully effected by it.
I wrote this as a reminder to myself to be transparent with my future children, even in the face of fear, rather than to silently and complicity allow a sickening secret to be passed down to them.
It's called Generational Sickness:
My family has pretty sick roots. The deepest of which I only recently discovered.
I remember as a child getting together with my older relatives for a backyard barbecue or birthday party and having an aunt or my grandmother telling me to not go into the house alone. I didn't understand that as a girl. Why should I be afraid? This is our relative's home! It's not huge, I won't get lost, I'm a good kid, there is no danger here.
In my adulthood, I learned why that was. One of my great uncles managed to molest two of my aunts, one of whom ended up molesting my cousin, her own child, (which I never would have known if my cousin was not brave enough to trust me with that story).
Nobody talked about it. In fact, if you were to bring it up, it might even be flatly denied. But the wounds that were inflicted are prevalent. The horror and the vileness of these acts remained hidden from me, whether it was to protect my innocence or, as I am starting to discover, was more to protect the family from shame (the irony).
I only learned of these stories because my cousins were brave enough to tell them. I am certain that there are other dark stories beneath my family tree, rotting the roots and making the whole tree sick, if we are not careful.
I wrote this poem after reflecting on all of this as well as the sickness and trauma inflected on my people, those as the original inhabitants of the place we now know as the USA and those who were forcibly brought here.
I wrote this as a reminder to myself that whatever sickness that has come passed down to me, I have the authority and the right to reject it and to stop it here in my own generation. I have the responsibility and the opportunity to stop it here, with me, so that my children will never be so painfully effected by it.
I wrote this as a reminder to myself to be transparent with my future children, even in the face of fear, rather than to silently and complicity allow a sickening secret to be passed down to them.
It's called Generational Sickness:
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