09/02/2023
Healing is creative...
I remember our first born watching me and my x-husband have a disagreement by phone. His dad took a tone with me that I did not like and I said I was about to end the conversation because it appeared that he was upset about something that had nothing to do with me. I told him that if he was upset about the summer schedule that he was welcome to be a part of the planning process next summer and told him to have a good day.
I am not really sure what was going through his mind, but I saw him processing. My son and I read part of the four agreements together, and we discussed the taking nothing personal And being impeccable with your words agreements. I'd like to think he was processing how I modeled them while maintaining my dignity and honoring his dad's. We discussed being impeccable with our word. He pushed back pretty hard, mentioning that he was about that retaliation life, and that he was not going to " Take that level of disrespect".
Most of us have a level trauma that does not allow us to manage our response to perceived disrespect. After reading My Grandmother's Hands, I was wondering how much of this is a generational trauma masquerading as black culture . We learned how to respond to being embarrassed by severely emotionally underdeveloped human traffickers.
We learned that the way to respond to embarrassment, having our intellect challenged, or our physical strength tested was to inflict physical and/or emotional pain. We learned that the powerful inflict pain when embarrassed.
But the other side is that we learned tolerance for embarrassment is the safest response for those unable to wield their physical power. Safety can be a hell of a drug. It is what our brain craves and remembers, even when circumstances have changed. Even when we no longer need to be protected.
As my mentor says, we have to re-story our responses. It doesn't have to be violence or silence. We can heal our generational trauma by creating new ways of responding that better serves us.
There's a quote that I love "The opposite of war is not peace. It is creation." It is not living under oppressive rule for the sake of peace. It is not being silent in your pain or discomfort, for the sake of not stirring the pot. It is coming up with a new way that better serves everyone. Healing is creative. Creating new neural pathways, finding new ways to respond, and new ways to engage. Understanding what the underlying feeling is when we feel embarrassed, loss of control, inadequacy, and weakness.
Wouldn't it be something if we could put a space between the event and the response? If we could pause and say I feel embarrassed because I have lost control of you and that makes me feel weak and inadequate. Followed by wow that is some oppressive thinking. Why do I have a desire to have control of you? I'm sure that I am not the originator of that thought. It reeks of white-body inflicted trauma. What if we restored it to something that would form a new pathway to safety.
What if we said I am embarrassed because I have been taught that I should desire to control peoples' behaviors and declare that this is an expectation I wish to release. Real power is to choose which emotion is best suited to resolve the situation. Tell my brain, I am safe when my fight, flight , or freeze response is engaged. I can choose to regulate it if there's no actual threat. I breathe and let my heart speak. I breathe and let disappointment speak. I can breathe and let fear speak. Let the vulnerable emotions masquerading as hardcore anger out. But I always let Love have the last word.
