september 11th | journal 2
I believe many of the habits and sensemaking I possess are intergenerationally inherited. At times, I feel I am my mother's mirror, and at others, we could not be more different. I wake up in the morning at 5 am just as my mother does, not from conditioning but instinct. Whether conscious or subconscious, ways of knowing and being have been passed on to me, and I realize this more each day. I often joke with my partner about how I've developed what we in the diaspora call the "African mom anxiety" before having any children. As a teen, I would seek chaos and denounce tradition. I don't recognize those traits anymore. That said, I feel these inherited traits are not fixed. We can examine them, resist them, or reshape them. Coming from a culture that relies heavily on oral tradition and history as a means of exchanging information, acknowledging intergenerational patterns is a rite of passage that allows us to see how deeply our orientations to the world are rooted in collective histories, not simply in personal choices.