A Childhood Not My Own

When I was formed in my mother’s womb in the early 70s, I had no clue what kind of story I was being born into. I came into a world already bruised by chaos, segregation, and wounds I couldn’t see — wounds my mother carried long before I took my first breath.

She was barely more than a child herself when she had me. A child who had already lost her own mother in the most violent way imaginable. My grandmother… murdered by the hands of a man who would later climb into a pulpit and preach about God. Can you imagine? A murderer turned preacher. To this day, I still shake my head.

The story was whispered to me in pieces. My great-grandmother — the one who tried to hold our family together — told me how she once confronted the man about killing her daughter. He didn’t break down. He didn’t confess. Instead, he allegedly struck her with a cast iron skillet. He walked away untouched. No charges. No justice. Just silence. Just pain.

And I often wonder… how did my mother survive that? What went through her mind when she learned her mother was gone forever? Did she fall apart inside? Did she learn to swallow her grief so no one would see? Did she cry for help, or did she just bury it and keep moving like nothing happened?

Then there was me. Born to a man who vanished as quickly as he appeared. My great-grandmother once told me, “If he stood in front of me today, I wouldn’t know him.” That’s how absent he was. A vase of flowers in a hospital room was the last trace of him.

And my mother… was she ready to love me? To care for me? Maybe she wanted to. Maybe she didn’t know how. I’ve been told stories — stories I can’t un-hear. Like the day she left me alone in the house with a soiled diaper. By the time my great-grandmother found me, I was trembling, hungry, raw with rashes that burned. She said when she tried to clean me, I screamed louder with every touch, my little body fighting against the sting of neglect.

Where was my mother? Out in the streets, lost in a world I’ll never truly understand. My great-grandmother looked at her one day and said, “This child is on her way to hell.”

And maybe that’s where my chapter really begins… not in the safety of a mother’s arms, not in the protection of a father’s presence — but in the hands of a great-grandmother who had already carried too much pain of her own.

But here’s the thing: pain doesn’t just vanish. It seeps. It lingers. It trickles down from one generation to the next.

The question is — would I carry it too?