The unhealed Child

THE UNHEALED CHILD An inheritance of silence, shame, and unfinished healing. This is for the child who was taught to ask: Do I belong here? Am I family or foe? Am I not beautiful enough? Am I not like everyone else? This is for the child who grew up feeling different, who never quite understood why being themselves seemed to be a problem. This is for the unhealed child who was taught that abuse was part of parenting. To the child whose only crime was being born. To the child whose dying wish was to experience a mother’s love and a father’s guidance. Before the unhealed child discovered that they were unhealed, there were countless moments when their only wish was to run away from home. I do not belong here. Are these really my family? Are these really my parents? For the longest time, the unhealed child finds no peace because, like many others, they grow up believing they are the problem. To be different is to become an outcast. To be different is to become the unwanted one in the clan. Like animals, we sometimes brutalise our own because they dare to be different. Perhaps if humans learned something from rainbows, they would understand that it is the different colours that make them beautiful. Sometimes, sameness does not create beauty. It leaves no room for discovery, no room for dreams, no room for another way of seeing the world. We are simply too blind to recognise the beauty in our differences. And perhaps, if only you could see the beauty your mother sees, or once hoped to see, you would understand. After years of barriers, disappointments, and struggles, she finally has a child she can call her own. Yet that child arrives different in every possible way. And still, a mother can be grateful. Have you ever watched an animal give birth to an offspring that looks different from the rest? Have you seen how it continues to nurture, protect, and love it? Why is it sometimes so difficult for us to do the same? THE AFRICAN FAMILY AND THE THINGS WE INHERIT There is a science to the African mentality that I sometimes struggle to understand. How does a child grow up wishing their own parents would disappear? Why do relatives sometimes gather like vultures around a grieving family, waiting for an opportunity to inherit what someone spent a lifetime building? Why should a widow and her children be left at the mercy of hyenas when the man who once protected them is no longer alive? What happened to family? What happened to the people who were supposed to become your shelter when the world became too difficult to face? As an African child, you are often born to adapt. Born to be strong. Born to endure. Wear your shoes well, because the world will teach you to walk through things you never imagined. And then there is the question of identity. For generations, our relationship with the white skin and the standards of beauty attached to it has influenced how we see ourselves. In school, we jokingly called our darker classmates names like Blackie, while a fair-skinned child or woman was often described as beautiful. And for so long, children grew uncomfortable in their own skin because they did not look like what society had taught them beauty should look like. They did not know that their black skin carried its own beauty, history, and identity. They did not know that they did not need to become lighter to become beautiful. And today, we live in a world where people are willing to alter their natural skin colour simply to fit into someone else’s definition of beauty. But have you ever seen a black woman beneath the sun? Have you watched her skin reflect the sunlight? She walks with pride. Her head held high. Her melanin needs no permission to exist. Perhaps she understands something we are still trying to learn: Beauty was never supposed to be a competition between skin colours. And sometimes, we forget that we are human beings, too. Perhaps it is time we allowed our humanity to show. THE WOMAN WE WERE NEVER TAUGHT TO BECOME Our mothers were not always taught how to become women in their own right. Many were taught how to become wives. How to serve their husbands. How to worship the man of the house. How to remain silent when he speaks. How to make babies who would inherit his name. But who taught them how to inherit their own dreams? Who taught them that they could be women without losing themselves in marriage? Who reminded them that they were people before they became wives and mothers? And what happens to the daughters who grow up watching this? What happens when they begin to believe that love means submission, that respect means silence, and that being a good woman means having nothing left for yourself? We watch our children grow into another version of the things we once hated. We raise them with the same anger, the same fear, the same shame, and the same words that once hurt us. Because we never confronted what we went through. Our mothers were never given the opportunity to confront what they went through. And their mothers before them may have carried the same wounds without ever finding the language to explain them. And so the cycle continues. A generation of children inherits a hatred of self they never created. A generation of parents struggles to love without repeating the things that once hurt them. And for so long, the black woman has lingered, swimming in the reflection of her own darkness, searching for herself when the moon and the stars decide to hide behind the clouds. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A WOMAN? To be a woman is to be curious. To be a woman is to be everything and sometimes feel like nothing. To love and to hate. To grow, sometimes without being allowed to outgrow the expectations placed upon you. To cherish the stories, the memories, and the little things that make life worth holding on to. To be a woman is simply to breathe. And sometimes, to forget how to breathe. To exist in a world that constantly tells you who to become while rarely asking who you already are. And while all of this is happening, we live in nations governed by corrupt people, sick leadership, and individuals whose hearts seem consumed by greed. The rich and powerful cling to authority because power becomes the only thing they know how to protect. And the ordinary child continues to grow. Learning what love means from people who never experienced it properly. Learning what respect means from people who confuse it with fear. Learning what beauty means from a society that taught them to dislike their own reflection. Learning what family means from people who sometimes make home the hardest place to survive. So tell me: What happens when that child grows up? What happens when they become a parent? Will they finally recognise the little person standing before them? Or will they look at that child and see the mistakes, the disobedience, and the differences they were once punished for? Will they listen? Will they apologise? Will they learn to love without making a child earn it? Because somewhere between the child we were and the adults we have become, there is a responsibility we cannot keep running away from. We must stop making children pay for wounds they never caused. And perhaps the greatest inheritance we can give the next generation is not our surname, our property, or the traditions we have defended for years. Perhaps it is the freedom to grow up without having to spend the rest of their lives recovering from their childhood. Perhaps, just perhaps, the unhealed child can finally become a healed adult. And the child standing before them can simply be a child.