My three-year-old daughter loves to join me in the kitchen when I cook. Elevated by her little step stool, at my side, she observes. Sometimes she helps wash the rice while we make the traditional Jamaican Sunday rice-and-peas dinner or roll dough into small balls to make fried dumplings served with ackee and saltfish. I see these intimate moments with her as chances to pass on pieces of my Jamaican heritage, just as my mother did with me — traditions and patterns have been passed down through generations of women in my family.
I think about my daughter, a second-generation Canadian, passing on the same traditions if she decides to start a family someday. I also think about the traditions I do not want to pass on, such as patterns and traditions in our Jamaican culture that stem from generations of abuse and trauma. Those are the traditions that will end with me.
Growing up in the Caribbean is a collective experience. Though each island making up the Caribbean region is different in various ways, we share similar experiences and cultural systems from our shared past of enslavement, indentureship, and colonization. The impacts of these events are still engrained in Caribbean society today in the form of intergenerational trauma. In the same way that we pass down cultural traditions to our children, we can pass down patterns and behaviours rooted in trauma — physical, psychological, and sexual abuse — that can be traced as far back as our enslaved and indentured ancestors.
Caribbean women and girls face pervasive gender-based violence, a haunting echo of the enslavement, sexual abuse, and dehumanization historically faced by African women. The pervasiveness of these patterns of violence against women and girls mostly stems from the culture of silence and normalization in the Caribbean community. The impact of these experiences can be long-standing, and, if not addressed, can be passed down from one generation to the next.
For many of us, the best option to escape the reality we face in the Caribbean is to migrate.
Like most immigrants, I left my homeland for Canada in search of greater opportunities. It is also common for most Caribbean parents to migrate in hopes of escaping a life of hardship and trauma in their homeland and of providing a better life for their children. It wasn’t until I became a mother that I truly understood the deep emotional sentiment of this. However, while many of us physically relocate, we often carry these traumas with us and unconsciously project them onto our children, causing issues such as low self-esteem, anxiety, fear, and unhealthy attachment-style relationships, according to the APA.
Being outside my homeland in a new environment opened my eyes to the patterns in my family that are rooted in generations of trauma — unhealthy authoritarian parenting styles and forms of discipline, dismissive attitudes toward mental health and emotional abuse. No doubt my parents did their best, but breaking these patterns is not an easy task; it’s a constant learning and growing process.
(Courtesy of Kabrena Robinson)
This is an experience shared by many Caribbean women in the diaspora. Take my friend Sara Persaud, for instance: she migrated to Canada from Guyana at age 10 with her single mother, fleeing an environment of domestic violence. These experiences affected her mental health, and she became estranged from her mother, who had a dismissive attitude toward her struggles. “My own experience with my mom taught me that it is important to take mental health seriously when it comes to your children, no matter how young they are,” she says. “West Indian parents have a tendency to shrug off these issues because we are always supposed to be seen as being strong and capable of bearing any burden without getting help. Sometimes our pride is our biggest downfall in the community.” She says she’s since tried to be more conscious of how she teaches her children about mental health and breaking the cycle of trauma: “It comes from our past of hardship and learning to adapt and survive, but at some point, we have to heal. That is what I have tried to do for my children. I want to heal myself and teach them that it is okay to not be okay and get help.”
Stigma toward mental health is a common trauma response in the Caribbean community. According to Indo-Caribbean therapist Sherrie Mohammed, “stigma of mental health in the Indo-Caribbean community is a fear-based response that serves as a barrier to accessing support.” Such stigma, she adds, stems from stories of oppressive measures that were historically used on people that struggled with their mental health.
Overcoming this tradition of fear-based stigma, she says, requires raising awareness around the topic of mental health in Caribbean communities so that individuals can get the support they need.
As the mother of a spirited and strong-willed three-year-old, I have learned that the first step to breaking these patterns and traditions of trauma is awareness and accountability. To move forward, we must know where we are coming from. A greater awareness of our family history will allow us to access the root of the traumas we face.
More important, parents must look in the mirror and take accountability for patterns and behaviours that might be triggered by trauma and must consider seeking help through therapy. It takes great courage and strength to overcome centuries of oppression and abuse passed on through generations, but change starts with us, and our children’s futures depend on it. We must break the cycle.