“Love was dashed in Mother’s demands to eat, sometimes scolding.
Other times, threatening with a rolling pin or spice jar.
It could’ve easily been mistaken for anger.
But I was learning her language.”
Sometimes love is silent, sometimes it screams. Sometimes it emerges even despite pain, crude but pure.
– From my memoir, Where the Tiger Dwells, on the ways love speaks despite obstacles of class, caste & racism.
What would you share if you could bare to? What would you write if you had the courage to tell your parents about all the sadness, the rage, the confusion, the joy? It doesn’t matter if they’re close by, whether you have a loving relationship, or a contentious or estranged one. Even if they’ve passed on, there will always be more to say. You may be wondering though, where you should even begin. With feelings colliding into one another like, it could feel paralyzing.
It would help to start by identifying the emotions you feel. What would you want to tell them based on that? You can start small. You can start with gratitude. But you can also start with anger. It’s about where you are in your relationship. You can travel through one set of feelings to another very contradictory one, depending on how you truly feel.
I’ll be doing a guided series on writing letters to our parents, where I’ll prompt questions that help get to a place of increased clarity. Because when it comes to parents, it’s usually muddied with all the paradoxical feelings, in big waves, and sometimes emotions subconsciously hidden we didn’t even realize until pen meets paper.
Contact me for more info on my letter writing gathering. And let me know if you’ve ever written a letter to your parents. Did you give it to them or keep it? Maybe you burnt it, tore it up or hid it. Regardless, it’s a courageous thing to do and it can be a gift to yourself whether shared or not.
Take good care.
Cultural trauma has harmed people deeply, overpowering how we operate, whether by society’s standards or family expectations, often an overlap of both. Here are some ways to understand whether it’s something that impacts you. If so, examine it so you can begin to heal.
Learn where the boundaries are between cultural demands and what you authentically seek out of life. It’s healthy to recognize these differences. It leads to the ability to say no. It leads to finding a sense of self after living under restrictive cultural mandates that may have been a barrier to peace, joy and the freedom to connect with ourselves. It leads to embracing the parts of culture that define us and separate from the ones that are enforced upon us.
Children in immigrant families often don’t have language to identify what we’re experiencing. Is it spankings or beatings, discipline or trauma? Much of what happens behind closed doors is normalized because it has gone on for generations. However, that doesn’t make it alright. Not everything can be included under the umbrella of culture.
When we don’t know what to call something, we also don’t know how it affects us. If it’s just what happens, we tend to minimize how painful it is. But calling it out for what it is gives it the proper attention and weight. To name something means to identify and examine it, to possibly change it or keep it the same. Naming ultimately helps us see how we see ourselves.
An article by Sunil Noronha powerfully describes the harm endured by a child who is beaten under the guise of discipline: Spare the child, stash the rod, it’s time to make your minds broad
Name what you feel. It holds power.
Photo by James Wheeler on Unsplash
Your parents may also have difficulty identifying what it is. But then, when you think about it, they left everything they knew, and likely most everyone they knew, to find opportunity. That was their main goal. Opportunity. And really it can be translated to mean deep sacrifice, even sacrifice of connecting with themselves.
So everything else takes second place. I often wonder if my parents had time to grieve. But I think I know the answer. Many had little time to pause, breathe, rest, in the ways they deserved. And may have unintentionally passed the heartache down to their children. Generational patterns, modeling, trauma, we can’t always tangibly place it, because it sits in our bones. But you know it’s there.
Work on identifying the ways you also hold a sadness, maybe for them, for yourself, for both. Take it, examine it, try to know it so you can release it. Allow it to stop here.
