Mixed emotions
When you leave a Diaspora transgenerational workshop, you may have a mix of emotions. In part there may be a warm fuzzy feeling, you know, that sense of having seen or done something that is important to you. Or you may be feeling eager to get back home and share what you have learnt with your partner or sister or mother, you’re looking forward to getting on the phone and saying, “hi, i just had this amazing day…….”
What just happened?
You may also be wondering about what just happened, it all seemed a bit unexplainable, different people taking the roles of family members and creating meaning out of it. It feels a bit ‘magical!’. Or you may just be feeling a little bit churned up, you know something has just happended that is important, but you are feeling a bit conflicted or confused, because what you have just experienced has confirmed something that you already knew but had never admitted to yourself.
Unspoken and Unacknowledged
Often these things or issues are unspoken and unacknowledged in the family or community, so coming to a Diaspora workshop is a place where secrets can be spoken and feelings listened to. When you come to a workshop the things that you bring into the room, the difficulties, the pain the traumas get heightened and ‘lit-up’, they surface so that you can see them clearly. Although this can seem difficult to do, it is also illuminating and revealing, as one person recalled……
‘it was like suddenly seeing very clearly something that I had been in the dark about, I knew it was there, but I couldn’t ever seem to see it” .
A reflection of what you bring!
The truth is, what you get from a Diaspora transgeenrational workshop will reflect what you brought to the day and what is happening for you in your family, community and life. All mixed in with your hopes and expectation from the day. Not everone is the same, people come to a Diaspora workshop because they are exploring difficult things in their life and their relationships; they hope that by coming they will get a better understanding about the causes of their family dilemmas and problems.
Getting clearer
During the day things become clearer because we work on them together, as a group in community. This act of working together is central to the way that problems get resolved in African or Caribbean communities, an issue is rarely just considered to belong to one person, it is often rooted in the larger family or community and everyone gets engaged and often has something that they want to say about it
- a feeling like being part of a community, all working together on one persons issue and by default working on yours
- a reflection back to you about something or someone in your own life.
- a wider perspective on your ancestral line and the generational patterns
No-ones talking to Auntie
For example, the issue at hand is someone’s auntie who hasn’t spoken to their sister for the last 20 years. As you watch someone else explore what might haave happened in their family, you get an aha moment, “this is like my Aunt Sally who hasn’t Talked to Uncle Kenneth for over 10 years, wow, whats that all about?”
Departing with learning
When you depart the session you may not have an answer for what will create a solution to Aunt Sally and Uncle Kenneth not speaking, but boy, you sure are clearer about what the issue might be, and the bonus is you also have an inner knowing about what some of the issue may be about, in fact it makes you want to explore the issue for yourself
Until next time…..
Transgenerational Practice for Diaspora Communities of Colour
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