I once admired

your working hands.

Hands rough and strong,

so streaked with dirt.

Hands that feed, that

fight, that teach.

Hands that prayed,

and they pray still.

Hands that

risk their life to

abandon a homeland,

to cross a border,

hands that left your

home a world away

to make this strange land

mine

Aching hands that,

of sun and sweat, and

prayers and dirt,

built my life

on American soil

Loud hands at work,

at family reunions, church,

at quinceañeras, barbecues.

Loud hands outside,

Silent at home.

Sunburnt

hands that rip

The bitter taste of

fatherhood from your

unwilling tongue.

I've always watched your

Working hands come

home to rest,

No strength for love,

no time for me,

only to eat,

and work,

and sleep.

I pray my soft

delicate hands

Be as strong and tough

as you,

My gentle American hands,

such tender hands, so

unlike yours.

My privileged hands,

they want for nothing.

Such sheltered hands

Uncalloused, young,

untraveled.

I pray that

my American hands

have room to hold

the love you never did,

Love meant for me, my

brother, sister, mother,

or kids.

My hands provide

for not a child unseen.

They work to care, to

mend their hearts,

To wipe the sweat upon

my brow only after I dry

their tears.

My hands

won't work to kiss the

sun, my hands will work

to make a home.

My working hands

will work

To love.

You always said, 'I'm telling you what my father told me, don't wait too long to have kids.'

When I turned thirty, you took me on a long walk - and explained my own dwindling fertility to me - as if you couldn't understand why I hadn't yet produced a child. Another disappointment I suppose. I made many excuses - my low wages, my high rent, my partner's reluctance to become a father, the increasing conflicts within the world, the collapse of ecosystems, pollution. All of these reasons were real - but none of them is what was truly keeping me from motherhood.

The truth is - I didn't feel equipped to become a parent. I was painfully aware of my hair-trigger temper, my disproportionate reactions, the undercurrent of violence that flowed through my veins, always threatening to come to the surface.

My own world felt so unsafe that I could never imagine willingly subjecting an innocent being to it. Because children are supposed to be nurtured and kept safe. They are supposed to be encouraged and loved unconditionally, so they can grow into the beautiful and unique (and yes sometimes frustrating) person they are supposed to be. And I didn't get that from you as a child. The home I grew up in felt like living on the edge of a volcano. Sometimes dormant, usually spewing lava - but occasionally blowing up and destroying everything in it's path.

Now I am healing and learning healthy communication and emotional maturity. Maybe one day - with the right partner, I might feel safe enough to nourish a child. Maybe not. Either way, I am determined to break the pattern here.

I just wish you would take the time to come to terms with your own childhood trauma - I can't imagine what you have suffered to make you as you are.

*I swear I meant to follow the prompt. Alas, I wrote this...content warning-ish, I guess*

You told me I was ugly.

Worthless. Brainless. Pitiless.

You told me I would never amount to anything more

than the sad shadow of a dream you'd predestined for me.

You told me I was small,

and then when I outgrew you,

you cut my legs from beneath me.

You told me I was talent-less,

unworthy of investment.

You told me not to reach, not to strive, not to build myself up.

You even taught me that it wasn't worth the effort.

Why become at all when the world only seeks to destroy?

I listened.

That scrawny, pathetic, witless child listened.

I drank down your bitterness and convinced myself it was sweet honey.

I forgave every transgression.

I offered myself up onto your altar,

allowed you to mold me into your dream.

I didn't fight back.

I didn't ask for more than the pittance you gave.

I stagnated.

And I reveled in every shred of praise.

I stopped caring about my conscience.

I ignored the inner voice that screamed

to be more than a slave.

Yes, the child I was

forgave.

And then,

I was suddenly awake

and full of hate.

I hate what you made me.

I hate that I let you convince me to be nothing.

My conscience is screaming now, motherfucker--

and it's telling me that you committed a travesty.

You heinous, insidious, shriveled little prick-

you stole that girl's soul.

You saw her.

You saw that she would've rattled the very core of the universe if given half a chance.

And you were terrified.

So you crushed her- crushed me- like the ember at the end of a cigarette butt.

I became ash beneath your feet.

I am no longer a child.

She may have forgiven you,

but I don't.

Most certainly not when I went and fulfilled your dreams for me.

When I pumped out children like some prized brood-mare

because it was the only thing I'd ever been taught to be.

I became that mother.

I became that wife.

I became that live-in maid you always wanted me to be.

But your plan backfired.

Because the moment I looked into my child's eyes,

I felt more powerful than you'd ever allowed me to be.

And I knew

I would burn the world for that little girl.

I would even burn you.

She will never doubt for a moment

her immense worth.

And as she grows, I feed that fire in her.

Intelligence that was quelled in me,

looms iridescent behind her cunning eyes.

She will rattle the very core of this universe.

And I will be there

beside her

a battle cry on my lips,

as she conquers every dream she ever dared to dream.

And you will still be dead

Ash beneath our feet.

I learned to hate the idea of being a woman.

Our only purpose seemed to be to serve, to submit, to be silent and suffer.

I watched as my mother cried and begged church after church for forgiveness for a crime she had no choice in commiting.

Knowing her story, her suffering,

intimately by age 9,

I had wept with her and could not fathom the cruelty and audacity of all of those pious, holy hypocrites to find joy in her desperate pleas.

I learned that I was not as good as my brothers, I was weaker, more emotional, better suited for cooking and cleaning and laundry than sports or video games or cars.

I learned that my voice should never be heard when there is a man present, that if a man chooses to give you attention, you should always be polite and sweet and thankful.

I learned that I would never be smart enough to understand the things in a man’s world.

I grew up with the notion that women like my mother and I are not pretty enough, we should be grateful for any man’s attention, because we have brown hair, brown eyes, baby bearing bodies and deep sadness that no one could ever deal with.

I had more body hair than most boys in my 5th grade class, I was too short, my hair was never blonde, my eyes weren’t blue, my stomach never once flat enough despite years of not eating and vomiting constantly- all of this kept as a tally of my exact degree of worth, or lack thereof, in the back of my brain.

I learned that I looked so similar to my mother through any eyes but her own.

She could only look at me and see her past regrets, now I look at me and I see a nauseating blur of two people that broke and abandoned me.

And so I burned the idea that I could ever be a woman to the ground.

I longed to be anything *but* a woman, hoping that would be enough for my father to care, to rewrite my past through a new lens, give me new worth, allow me to enjoy the things that he did even though I was not born with the same body as my brothers, but it turns out I will never be a man either.

There is nothing left that feels like mine except the in between shades of bluish gray.

The absent, gaping void settled betwixt here and there.

I do not belong to either world and I never will.

But I will forge my own place for my younger self to find safety and sanctuary in- even walking through the flames of the hell I’ve been damned to.

I am a phoenix.

Even if it takes lifetimes to rise from the ashes of generational grief.

your parenting made me avoid begetting a child

so fierce unforgiving wicked stern easy to anger

belittling scolding "don't speak did i ask you to

your gifts childish poorly constructed garbage

why would you do this god you wretched rag

to be thrown in the fire weeping gnashing teeth

i'll beat god into you yet spare the fucking rod

on your bare bottom get the belt hit him again

i didn't ask to be a mother why are you so needy

get away from me begging to suck my dry nipple

heal yourself go out and play until called to sleep"

I hear your voice still haunting daytime convictions

the specter of your genes tainting my thin blood

made me know I could never do to any poor child

what was done to me by you in the name of love

It started with nightmares. Blood-curdling screams that would jolt me awake in the dead of night, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets as memories and fears that weren't my own clawed at my mind. Images of war, of violence so horrific it seemed beamed in from another plane of existence entirely.

At first, I thought it was just a phase, night terrors brought on by stress at school or the pressures of being a teenager. But the nightmares only grew more vivid and persistent as the years wore on. By college, I was avoiding sleep entirely, living off caffeine and adrenaline as the waking world became a sanctuary from the psychological torture that awaited me each night between the sheets.

It wasn't until my psychology elective that I began to untangle the knot of intergenerational trauma that had been passed down to me like a curse, striking at me from the grave.

My grandfather Ian never spoke of his experiences in World War II. According to family lore, he had been captured and held in a prisoner of war camp for 18 agonizing months, enduring torture and deprivation that marked him permanently, though you'd never know it from his stoic silence.

When he finally returned from the war, his own father was so traumatized that he could barely look at his son, the living reminder of the violence and fear he had endured on the frontlines. And so the psychological scars went unacknowledged and unprocessed, packaged up like a ticking time bomb to be passed on to future generations.

My dad jokes that the reason he had kids so late in life is because he spent his 20s and 30s trying to outrun the ghosts of his father and grandfather. The substance abuse, the self-destructive behavior, the inability to form real emotional bonds - now I recognize these were his ways of coping with the ancestral cloud of trauma and disconnection that haunted him.

And I inherited it all. The night terrors, the emotional numbness, the feeling of always being on guard, waiting for the next mortar shell to drop on me at any moment. This was my bloody genetic legacy, an unwanted inheritance of psychic injuries incurred before my great-grandparents had even said their marriage vows.

I fought it as long as I could, wrapping the pain up tight like my grandfather had done and shoving it deep inside where it couldn't be explored or excavated. But the nightmares always found a way to bubble up, threatening to swallow me alive in the process.

At my lowest point, I found myself drunk on the bathroom floor at 3 AM with a bottle of sleeping pills, seriously contemplating ending the cycle of intergenerational trauma through the most permanent solution. And that was my wake-up call.

There are resources out there to begin the process of generational healing, even for those of us who feel irrevocably damaged by the traumas of our ancestors. I started seeing a trauma counselor and joining group therapy sessions with others who carried their own inherited psychological wounds.

I'll never forget the first time I met Jacob, a young man whose grandfather and great-uncles survived the atrocities of a Nazi concentration camp but never opened up about the soul-scarring brutality they experienced. Jacob and I became accountability buddies, checking in on each other's progress and emotional state while we worked through EMDR therapy and family mapping exercises.

With the group's support and my counselor's expert guidance, I began to unravel the heavy cloak of trauma, allowing the light to pierce the darkness I had been living under for so long. I started practicing mindfulness and meditation to find stillness and separate my own identity from the intergenerational pain.

The nightmares persisted in the beginning, with vivid flashes of images and sounds that made me jolt awake in a cold sweat. But I learned grounding techniques to ease the anxiety spirals and remind myself that I am my own person, not just an avatar for my family's tragedies.

As the weeks and months passed, the nightmares slowly started losing their grip on me. The visions of war and violence faded, replaced with more abstract fears and half-remembered fragments. Some mornings, I would wake up and realize with surprise that I had slept through the night undisturbed, with no memories of dark dreams whatsoever.

With that release of the nightmarish visions, I felt myself becoming lighter somehow, less weighed down by the unseen baggage I had been carrying for so many years without realizing the burden. I laughed more easily, took more emotional risks by opening myself up to others, and discovered newfound reserves of creativity and ambition that had been locked away by the traumatic inheritance.

Jacob and I still keep in close touch, meeting up for a hike and outdoor meditation whenever we're in the same area. We often remark on how our friendship formed from the mutual goal of healing from generational trauma, but now our bond transcends that psychic scar tissue. We are who we are because of it, but no longer defined or imprisoned by it.

My story is not unique, unfortunately. According to research, trauma can be encoded into our DNA and passed down over multiple generations through cellular memory. Many of us may be walking around haunted by nightmares and neuroses imprinted on us like scratches on wax from experiences that predated our birth, feeling the pangs of fear and violence that scarred our ancestors.

But just because these unwanted inheritances get passed down to us, that doesn't mean we can't begin the process of healing them. What my grandfather and father and so many others of their wartime generations couldn't do - open up the traumas and allow themselves to feel them, metabolize them, release them - is still possible for us.

It takes courage, patience, perseverance. It takes being willing to feel the weight of atrocities and psychic injuries we never experienced directly but which became entangled in our cellular code. It takes a village of support, of shared empathy and mutual dedication to doing the shadow work and bringing light to what has remained cloaked in darkness for so long.

These days, I sleep through the night more often than not. And on the occasions when I have a nightmare that summons those ancestral agonies, I don't panic or try to stuff them back down. I allow myself to sit in the discomfort for a while, grounding myself with deep breaths and mantras to remind myself that I am safe, that those horrors are in the past. And then I release them back into the ether, more convinced than ever to continue doing my part to cauterize the generational wounds.

We can't keep passing down this heirloom of unprocessed trauma to our descendants like a sick inheritance. We have to be the ones to stop the cycle, to un-inscribe the nightmares from our DNA, to remember the light and the warmth of our shared humanity.

It may take generations more of mindful effort to heal the intergenerational trauma on a mass scale. But we are the ones with the opportunity and the obligation to step into that light, one cautious but determined step at a time.

My therapist said she specializes in the hole in your heart

that lacks a mom,

& I thought, no s***, Sherlock

that's your job

& I could write a post about mothers

my mom in particular

that would offend

almost everyone

but I won't

and that's growth

that's the hole in my heart

shaped like a machete wound

which are weapons used in combat

to fight our enemies, our

evil counterparts

& that is not the definition

Merriam Webster uses to define parent.

Combat.

& now I sit with the damage, the collateral effects

of it -

but it's our job to overcome

what was done to us

to move on and fill the hole

that sits and festers

until we seek professional help -

the machete hole in my heart

is saying:

it's okay to be broken

but don't pass on

this trauma, this propensity

to sit and ruminate about

what is past, and done.

I may be too young for this challenge, I'm only 20. My parents were not bad, were never "bad-bad." Just, dumb.

In many respects of how the world went round and the rules of things I knew more than they did. I knew my maths and my reading and my science better than they did. I like to think I know a bit better about how kind people are, how I won't be raped or murdered to spend a few hours with a friend out in public. And I do know that using medicines as they're meant to be used, how much are used is important. It's safe.

They were not bad, really they weren't.

A bad parent wouldn't take the primary school teacher seriously, a bad parent would belittle and demean me when that word slipped from some professional's mouth I couldn't give you an answer to what she looked like or what her grand, important job title was. She may have even been a man, but I do more often remember women being my primary caregivers for my medical issues and my disability.

You see, I have a disability called autism. But my parents caught it early and just as quickly had me enrolled in all the proper classes, with all the proper people at the clinic and at school, and wouldn't you know-- each and every one I remember as a properly kind and properly speaking adult.

What I mean, I was never talked down to. They talked with me and let me talk about what I wanted to. They never said my answers were wrong, but then again, I did know some answers were-- tedious-- to expose in the first place. Nevertheless we made progress.

Even if I did always know by my classmates' rolled eyes and their disdainful tones, from my emotions that were too big and always turned to the most minimal, most detrimental thing of my character, to my absolute apathy towards others-- on good days-- and on worse days utter ineptitude despite the present desire, the completely absent, innate ableness of interacting with others... is how I knew I was an anomaly. A freak.

Perhaps to others I may have seemed normal or perhaps the adults were politely lying for my sake. I did always believe I had wonderful teachers burdened with the most awful and ungrateful litter of students. After all, much of the class were bullies.

My professor just last year would beg to differ. About the yelling the teachers did, but that isn't really the point.

My parents never did tell me-- not until a therapist required the information when considering medicating a growing, parasitic depression that had siphoned the wonderment of summer to a numb not black but rather grey, dullness of a void-- my parents never did tell me that I had autism.

I couldn't tell you what equated with my autistic traits to place me in the Special Ed STAAR test group. Simply that I finished in an hour and liked the room and the time and the books-- since we conducted affairs in the library.

I can tell...

Autism is what equated the scripts inside my head of dialogues with adults and classmates, what could work, what could be, all in vivid detail. Since my brain is quite dysfunctional, wired incorrectly in the ways of social grace and etiquette.

Autism is what attributes to the emotions throughout my childhood that were so big and so vile and so wrong that they showed on my face and made my kind mother profess her daughter would be ugly if she continued to be so ghastly.

I don't hate her but I consider saying such a thing just a bit unfair. Certainly not healthy. Certainly not, I can confirm once I have read the experiences of other women.

Which professes the power of our ire as exactly what it is-- a ghastly, exquisite inevitability of being born and being wronged. A dragon that only a woman-- "delicate, weak, dutiful"-- woman is expected to chain up. In the basement, in the bowels of shame. Without light, without attention and care and affirmation. Without food, without touch. With the implicit hope that it would shrivel and die.

That then, is more society than her.

I didn't-- I still don't-- like my Dad in many ways.

He treated me, as an amusing little thing. Constantly joking, constantly whining and wanting from me. While my brother and sister, older than me, were allowed to refuse. To preserve and stash their snacks.

Not everyone has to share with you, not even family.

Only, I can't say no when Daddy wants. Wants my chips, wants my pastries, wants my hugs and my attention, wants the sodas he doesn't even like.

If I do say no then I'm the one wanting.

If I say no then no chips, no pastries, no peanuts or goodies from my Dad's bag. Because I am in the wrong.

That is, if he doesn't count down, tell me I have offended God and need to say sorry.

Once I'd spilled soup, I was four and it was by complete accident, I tried to tell my mother her yelling was really loud and it was hurting me. I was sorry and it was an accident and could she please not yell at me?

I was rebuffed with sarcasm.

But, I was told not to get angry and speak with my voice politely and intelligently. The way an adult does.

Adults as a whole never do seem to listen to the kid who speaks well with their inside voice much less take them too seriously.

Then I guess it's more that since we're kids, promises and ideas and opinions don't mean anything. Anything can be said to get the kid quiet. As long as they're quiet it doesn't matter the what or how.

And anything the kid "thinks it thinks" is cute, so adorably funny and a little dumb. A nuisance and an "attitude" at worst.

Is it infuriating when you're the one who requests time in the green and to commune with nature at the park? Or want to get and return books responsibly? Or want to share a new idea, at least talk, if we can start recycling or I eat just greens and veggies for a bit, since that is better for the Earth and the Earth is in danger? Sometimes they'll say a little lie and promise. Sometimes they'll laugh. And sometimes they'll give that look that says you're in over your head, way, way over your head from what makes sense or of reality.

I don't think I trusted the words "I promise" too much after that.

I didn't trust where my parents said we were going or even what we "would" do.

Sometimes, Daddy admitted, he just liked to laugh and see the look on my face.

"I promise."

"If God wants."

"Maybe. Could be. Possibly."

Spoiler: they mean to say no but hey, their English wasn't good back then. Maybe they didn't know what they were saying meant or wanted a kinder way to shut me down.

Then again, flippantly lying to silence their voices, their "ideas," is mostly society's idea. A grand, big idea that is carried by the adults as simply a thing to do.

Which is why I guess, I can throw my Dad-- stupid as he might be about a great deal-- the occasional compliment. I guess, well he did, help me at my worst, kept me stable, kept me safe and supervised when I wasn't in the best condition to be left alone while my Mother slept.

Which again, they helped me, sought out help in the ways they knew how. Ultimately made sure I was safe and that the risks were understood.

It's society, I think, that brought the other stupid stuff. That for a long while made me feel inferior and made my parents a manner of untrustworthy, if a most of all benign sort.

But the flavor is still bitter.

And there was still arguing and catastrophizing and screaming matches and crying done in front of me when it certainly shouldn't have been.

I don't want kids.

That's just a non-starter for me. As a person excluding my issues I am quite selfish and spoiled and inept when it comes to life skills.

Still, I want to listen to my cousins. I don't want to lie to them. I want to give them a reason if there's something I can't tell them.

Because kids aren't listened to, they aren't taken seriously and grow up rightly believing that their voices amount to nothing in the larger world, because why would they? When all the "golden rules" don't apply to the adults despite how important they supposedly are?

I've known quite acutely for a long while, it doesn't matter when a kid speaks or about what. It's an easy notion to believe when your anger is called ugly outright without a chance to even try parsing and cutting to the grievance, or promises are made simply to get you to leave or then be forgotten. To be treated as an imposition when reminded. Perhaps if memory had struck five hours ago.

Or when edicts and nuggets of wisdom and empathy don't apply to you if the lesson proves inconvenient to immediate pleasures of food or time or care. Nevermind that child's love language. Never mind the misgivings or inner deception occurring to do so from their valid emotions.

Have me! Own me!!

Bury me tenderly in your womb, Mommy dearest. Let me hear

for myself

if your heart truly holds a beat for me.

I need some comfort right now. A gentleness only a mother could give,

though I know,

I just need to suck it up, and push it all out of my mind

and just deal with things, right?

Because that’s just the way life goes, correct?

And no one is ever going to care so neither should I.

I don’t think you honestly believe the lopsided advice you give me.

I think that life beat you down so hard

that you just gave up.

You lost hope. You turned down your lamp to faith.

But I see your pain, Mother.

I see a system that had let you down as well.

Generational toxins,

recycling themselves, yet, with each revival,

it all becomes more venomous and unnerving than even our ancestors

could have imagined

would spring from under their aprons and belts.

I understand you were mistreated. Misunderstood. Misused.

There was never anyone in your corner rooting for you either.

No one to support you

or to encourage you to dream and wish on stars.

I understand the difficulty in breaking habits induced from trauma.

And though I know your advice is more to

exonerate yourself from taking any responsibility for your own mistakes,

I still sloppily forgive you.

My footsteps in early life may have been behind your unstable wavering,

but my seasoned voice,

my voice will speak loud enough that even the frightened child hurting inside of you

will smile, too, Mother.

This is for every little girl who was seen but not heard.