As a child to Caribbean parents, growing up in the 1970s and 1980s, it was rare to see families which did not raise their children with physical and verbal abuse on a regular basis.
The conversations we children engaged in with our "best friends" often revealed the dark secrets lurking behind the facades of our picture-perfect family lives. Even in the seeming "best" families, the children faced private, if not public shaming. Some lived in fear of parental outbursts to their childish inquiries, immature behaviour, or inability to live up to parental expectations for academic or sporting excellence.
Culture has a lot to do with this, as does Education. The Caribbean has evolved over time as has the world. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and national legislation to give effect to it have helped to change the landscape. We are aware of the research to which our parents and grandparents did not have access and we know the harm certain parental behaviour has on the mind and development of a child. (They knew it anecdotally though but it was the world in which they were raised.)
Often we hesitate to believe or say to ourselves or others that the manner in which we were parented was abusive, or at the very least, less than optimal. Some of you reading this may be mortified and may assume that to acknowledge such a deficiency would be to fly in the face of all the good our loved ones did for us. It would be the equivalent of ingratitude or betrayal to the family and its patriarchs or matriarchs.
Or would it?
Maybe the acknowledgement could be an opportunity for deep, heartfelt reflection on "What could I do better in those circumstances?" or it could set us on a journey of inquiry into the history of our families, ancestral norms, and cultures which would help us understand why people who loved their offspring sometimes showed it in harsh, hurtful ways.
In doing assignments to attain a certificate in Traumatology, I asked my mother about our family history and was able to identify multiple ACEs she and my grandmother would have experienced in their childhood as well as multiple traumas in adulthood.
This "research" gave me a better understanding of what had shaped these matriarchs in my life. I could see them through the lens of "what had happened to them" and the intergenerational trauma they bore. It helps me to forgive more readily and to walk in humility, being careful to interact with other people from a place of love and not pain.
As you embark upon or continue your own journey, perhaps this strategy to gain a better understanding of your family history will be of help to you.
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