I am listening to, and reading Terrai Trent's book, "The Awakened Woman". I love it.
There is so much I want to share.
"Soul Wounds"
"We might think that the easiest thing to do in the face of so much silencing would be to put our hope in the future generations. But this struggle does not end with us. The vicious cycle of silencing women is not only in Nikita's or my ancestral village, it's global, and it forces women to make drastic decisions that further marginalize them, which in turn seals their fate at various levels of trauma to the soul."
"Dr. Bertice Berry, an award-winning comedienne, motivational speaker, and sitcom star of The Bertice Berry Show, crystallized the viciousness of intergenerational family cycles when she said with no intervention we stay trapped in these negative cycles, as our parents and their parents before them were. In her book The World According to Me, Dr. Berry describes this generational curse: "Your parents are running a relay 'round the track and when you came along, they passed you the baton. You never really got to ask if this was your race... The pressure to keep going in the same direction , as fast as possible, is intense." No one can end this race without a powerful intention to change direction. " Tererai
I love the visual of the baton and the relay we have with our parents and the generations before them AND after us.
I refused to carry the baton after doing so for 46 years. I dropped it to the ground and there is no part of me that wants to retrieve it.
She goes on to say,
"My mother realized that if someone in our family and community was to break the cycle, she was going to have to achieve an almost impossible dream, a dream that would right the wrongs of generations and tear down barriers for girls. It was going to take a bold dream. And I had one - an insatiable hunger for education and for change to come to my village. Perhaps the most important gift my mother ever gave me was this: she made it clear to me that I had the right to dream, no matter the circumstances of my life."
"The truth is, if we don't make it our mission to speak our truths in the face of so much silencing, we may not be putting our hope in the next generation, but instead passing down our silences to them. Lakota social work professor Maria Yellow Horse Brave Heart calls this "historical trauma": "The cumulative emotional and psychological wounding over the lifespan and across generations." She also uses the phrase "Soul Wound" to explain this phenomenon."
"Researchers have long thought that descendants of people who have lived through hardship are likely to pass on their trauma by way of socialization cues like sharing their own fears, anxieties, and depression. But cutting edge research now shows that this intergenerational wound is also an embodied one. Science is now helping us see that trauma is not only transmitted through social and cultural expressions, but act social experiences of suffering actually permeate our biological makeup - past traumas of our families are store in our cells. Experts call this epigenetic" Tererai
Imagine, a mother who wants different for her daughter! This would have completely changed the relationship I had with my mother. My mother instead tried to make me seem insane.
Doing anything differently, is not met with understanding. It is not seen as empowerment or rising self-esteem. It is only seen as rebellion for dropping the baton.
She goes on to write about her grandmother.
"From Ambuya Muzoda I learned that gender inequality has the power to crush a woman's spirit. She firmly believed that young wives will only get in trouble by speaking out. She often said, "It is best to keep quiet and avoid saying things that trigger insults or beatings from a husband." Ambuya Muzoda suggests that I pretend to have a mouthful of holy water that cannot be swallowed and can only be spit out at the end of the argument. In other words keep quiet! She says this is the best way for wives to keep the peace at home. After all, one wouldn't want an abuser to have the satisfaction of seeing a woman's tears. To my grandmother, the suffering of woman was a curse with no solution."
"I did not agree with my grandmother's tragedy, but I also refused to let my husband see my tears. Early in my own first marriage, my husband encountered my stubborn refusal to cry. During fights, I wouldn't speak or fight back. I showed no emotion at all. I wouldn't give him the satisfaction. Instead, I'd bite my lower lip to hold back tears just as I did as a child working in the fields. This infuriated him and caused such incidents to escalates into assaults. And then blood and tears would begin to mingle. But to me, blood was better than Ambuya Mazola's approach. Although I admired her dignity, I did not want to live a passive life if I could avoid it."
"My grandmother was a beautiful, dignified woman, but she passed down to me the trauma of being a woman in a patriarchal culture. She passed down to me her soul wound. She did not know any other way to protect or guide me."
"Perhaps we haven't all experienced such profound trauma, but I'm willing to bet that you've suffered silences, indignities, sexism, or lost the pull of your girlhood dreams. What are your soul wounds? Can you afford to give those wounds to the next generation? "Our ancestors dreamed us up," writes educator and poet Walidah Imarisha, "and then bent reality to create us." What can you dream up for yourself and the world for the good of generations to come? Tererai
There is real power and legacy in the baton that carries the soul wounds of the women before us. We literally have to choose to passively carry forward the pain when we repeat our parents lives.
I recall vividly the morning, my intention was seared into my cells. "There will be no more." I can still see the sun glistening on the gravel rocks on my road, creating a bloody image before me.
There will be no more abuse, was my intention.
I will use my life to stop passively supporting abusers by my silences.
Every cell in my body agreed with me.
There was hope, that someday, a woman/girl/boy/man in my family could be raised from childhood without suffering at the hands of a sexual abuser.
That I would do the hard stuff.
I would suffer the loneliness, the ridicule and shame, of doing things completely different.
It was as if I was born to be the change I wanted.
I didn't have a role model to show me how.
I didn't have a mother who supported this change.
The village of church members were not cheering me on.
And yet, I walked on, resolute in my dream, that it was achievable.
Tererai goes on to write.
"I shared the experience of meeting Jo Luck with my mother. Despite my fears, I reaffirmed my desire for an education. I told her, "The woman makes me believe that I can get an education and that my children can too." You would think that my mother - like her mother before her - who had suffered through tremendous adversity and abuse would be worn down by life. But not my mother! What I said was music to her ears! She told me to hold on this dream as though my life depended upon it."
"She said, "If you believe in this dream of education and you achieve it, you are not only defining your future, but that of every life coming out of your womb, as well as those for generations to come. What you wast to become will change how you see the world around you." My mother repeated this mantra often, which to this day keeps me grounded."
"My excitement, however, was deeply vulnerable to the realities of my situation - poverty an abusive husband, and my low self-esteem were ever present to mock my excitement, to laugh at my dreams. My mother knew I needed to go back to my foundation to find my roots. And so she encouraged me to write down my dreams and bury them in the ground. She told me that Mother Earth would nourish them beneath the soil and help them grow. To ease my doubts, she added, "Vimba naNyadenga, nevadzimu vedu, zvaunoshuvira zvinobudirira" - Trust the Universe to honor your dreams."
Here is what she buried.
"I Tererai, have decided that as a woman, a life without education will be a burden. So I must educate myself. I met a woman from Heifer International who encouraged me to believe that I could achieve my dream of educating my children and myself. Here is my dream.
- To go to America
- To get an undergraduate degree;
- To get a master's degree; and to
- To get a PhD."
When she showed the paper to her mother, she said, "Every dream has a greater meaning when tied to the betterment of community. This is what creates a meaningful life. It is one thing to achieve a dream based upon individual needs and another to build upon the common good. Her words inspired me to add a fifth dream.
5. To give back to my community, especially to alleviate the plight of woman and girls."
I love that her mother was part of the dream creation and believed she could do it. And, she also believed that the Universe would honor it!
I never wrote mine down.
I didn't share my dream with my mother.
My early days of leaving the baton on the ground, was about the differences between us. Not a dream of someday, there being a family tree without abuse.
I wonder at the differences of our dreams?
I believe, my mother's dream is to keep her family together, no matter what.
So far, she achieved it - except Me.
I love the title of this book, "The Awakened Woman" and I agree with her that we are awakening around the world. Breaking the silences, dropping batons and planting dreams that will end the suffering of woman.
Here's to the awakened woman!!
