How Trauma Crosses Generations

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By the time my daughter was in PP1, she'd been to 4 different schools.

This was because of the endless cycles of here and there- the lack of stability. She'd meet teachers and kids, bond with them and then we'd be on the move again-either moving back home to start some job nlitafutiwa or running ndio 'nisipelekwe kwa chief'

On the day my mother hit me with that large cooking stick, she cried for hours (before we ran to my mother-in-law's place.

From that day on, she called my mother Shosho wa (a cousins name)

It never clicked in my mind that she had probably decided someone who hits her mother like that isn't her own grandmother.

And funny enough, she had NO trouble referring to to her Dad's mom as 'Shosho wangu'

I started reading about this moving around after watching a movie about army kids.

Then:

I watched her confusion when her father acted drunk and disorderly (to the extent of sleeping in ditches), and realized she was recording this somewhere and the longer I exposed her to it, the more it would become her undoing in adulthood.

Again, remember the father is struggling with alcoholism because of probably some unresolved emotional issues (trauma)

I realized the trauma was slowly crossing a generation.

I'd raise a traumatized child and she would raise a traumatized child and on and on it would go.

So I left both situations and decided to rebuild from a bedsitter and later- Watamu

Currently, we are doing the second year in the same school.

For the second year now she has the same favorite teachers

Same friends from school

Same house

No physical or verbal violence

Just stability

Every time she hits those 100/100 we were joking about

Or people say

'Ayanna is so confident,'

'Mtoto wako ni roho safi,'

'Your daughter is so social,'

I remind myself

"This, this is why face trauma head on. To stop it from wrecking another generation."

Otherwise, without introspection and changing patterns, you will pray and fast to destroy altars and break generational curses for a very long time.

As for us-

We Found Home🙏

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