GENERATIONAL CURSES

I don't know how I feel, something has been on my mind for a few days now. I wonder if we will ever come right as a people, whether we will ever be strong and wise enough to raise our children in a way that does not repeat patterns of the past. What is it about a woman that makes her so weak when she's in love that she is not able to think straight? Is it even love to begin with? Because the love I know protects and nurtures those around you, love does not force you to choose where the choice would obviously be impossible to make.

A young girl came to me the other day for assistance. She recently had a baby and her mother also has a baby just over a year old. Now this young lady received a bursary to study at an FET college but the bursary only covers books and tuition and that means she has to cover transport costs herself. from what I gather, this young lady does not get along with the mother's boyfriend and as a result, she has been cut off. Her mother will not help her care for her baby, she wont give her transport money so that she goes to school and now its gone as far as the mother telling her that she should fend for herself and not eat anything that she bought with her money. All this because she does not get along with the mother's boyfriend.

When she told me her story, my heart was sore, it still is. I haven't been able to understand how I would one day choose to side with a man over my daughter. I cant imagine being so desperate for a relationship to work that I take everything a man says and make it the truth. Right to say that my judgement is based on one side of the story but I cant imagine what a child can do that is so bad that you deem it right to deny her food. When you give birth to a child do you not know that you are responsible for them till such a time when they are able to stand on their own. How then do you just wake up one day and decide that, you have had enough, that the man you now have is so important to you that nothing else matters, not even your children.

I feel helpless, there is only so much I can do and I believe that it is not my place to get involved with family politics or even confront the mother about all is. My question though is this, how do I help her? I don't think I can just turn a blind eye to her story and go on like I don't know what is happening. I am praying, God will guide me, I don't believe in things just happening, this story must have come to my attention for a reason.

Her story makes me think, this is how the cycle of abuse, poverty and low self esteem continues amongst our people. When you deny a child the right to go to school because they have a baby, when you teach young ones that having a baby at an early age means that you have no future to speak of, when you teach young girls that whatever a man says goes and should not be disputed. That it is okay to hold on with everything that you have to a man, even if it means losing everything that you have or that you had built before him. This is how we raise a generation of bitter women, women who grow up to hate all that a man stands for, young women who live their life seeking the approval they never received from their parents, even if it means jumping from one relationship to the next, abusing alcohol or drugs, anything they can get their hands on that will numb the pain.

Breaking the cycle needs to start with the way in which we run our households, the way in which we protect our children and the values that we instil in them. A woman needs to be strong in order to raise strong children and by strong I don't mean teaching our children to take in whatever is thrown at them and still keep a straight face. I don't mean strong in the sense that we have been taught, strong is not staying in an unhealthy marriage, strong is not being abused but going to work everyday and smiling like nothing is happening. I mean, women need to know their worth, they need to stand up for what is right, they need to learn to put themselves first, to pursue individual happiness first because it is only when they are happy and complete by themselves that they are able to raise children who are happy and complete as well.

If we keep making the same decisions that our mothers and grandmothers made, we will always have in our societies, our communities -young women and men who feel failed by their parents, by society. The cycle continues and we continue with our lives as if we don't see it happen. It breaks my heart and more than that, I hope it tears at me to the point that it pushes me to action.