“Grace”


Many of us live in our ecosystems swimming in unhealed trauma, some known and some undiscovered. 
We make it through our days navigating our likes/dislikes or things we can and can’t tolerate with our own defense mechanisms. Little do we sometimes know, but we often “bleed” on people who didn’t cut us in the process. Some of our “cuts” we can see clearly, and we know where they originated, but we often have some that we can’t see and that we don’t notice. 

example:  My paternal grandmother, who was born in the 1920’s, was raised in a household that included her mother, father, siblings, and her paternal grandmother. 
My grandmother rarely, if ever, saw affection, outward love, praise, nor did she hear compliments in her household. She was taught the value of working hard, maintaining your household, and cherishing wealth and material things. These things were denied to her grandmother for most of her life due to living conditions in the south, as she often saw the opposite of affection, love, praise, and compliments. Growing up she was taught to be “strong” and to not raise your kids to be “weak” for various reasons including promoting their survival in the times they experienced. 

My grandmother met my grandfather, who was forced to leave his family in Mississippi at age 12 and live on his own, after he returned from his time served in the military. My grandfather saw an opportunity to show and receive the affection that he missed from his mother, when he met his wife, my grandmother. The dilemma was that my grandmother never lived in an ecosystem that showed her how to receive love, care, affection, and kindness, so she rejected my grandfather’s efforts to make her feel special. This in turn made my grandfather feel less than, unworthy, and embarrassed for showing vulnerability, and he turned to his defense mechanism, which was anger, violence, and rage. 

My grandmother and grandfather birthed and raised 6 children, one of them being my father. My father grew up in a household that was very structured from a functional standpoint, as each kid learned the value of money, land, and ownership of material things. However, in this household, they never saw caring, love, affection, grace, or compliments. They performed and met milestones out of fear; fear that if they are not successful, that there would be consequences from their parents. 

My father constantly sought validation and yearned for the moment that his parents would tell him “I’m proud of you, son,” but he had no true understanding of why that was nearly impossible for his parents to offer him based on their own wounds. During one conversation with my father about his family, including his personal memories with his grandparents, he shared many moments that made him feel “not seen” or “less than,” and he shared that he never understood why. 

I began researching our family history to help put pieces of our family puzzle together to gain a better understanding of where we came from, where we are, and where we’re going. In my deep dive down the family tree, I was able to share with my father that I discovered that his great grandmother, who helped raised his mother was born and spent half her life enslaved. As I shared more and more details, I noticed my dad’s eyes as I imagined his mind putting all the puzzle pieces together to make his life make more sense. He realized that his mother was unable to show him the love he desired because she never saw it before. He now realized that his grandparents who he though didn’t care for him, made him work, and taught him their trades as a mode of survival and ensuring he was self-sufficient. This was their way of showing love with all they had. As he began putting it all together, I remember him saying, “I can understand now why they were so mean. They didn’t have much in their life to smile about.” 

My father and I had this conversation after he had lived on this earth over 70 years, and many of those years he kept the unsettled trauma stored in the back of his mind and had been bleeding on others unknowingly. So, I decided in that moment to give grace and forgive, wipe away the blood that spewed on me over the years, and focus on my own wounds.

It took my father over 70 years to begin realizing that he was bleeding from wounds that were not his own, so I imagine that many others are walking around with trauma that they haven’t yet uncovered and healed. So for those who don’t always deliver the preferred version of themselves in situations I remind myself, “I don’t know the real why.”

And I give them Grace.