On boundaries, elders, slavery, survival, and bravery

I‘ve been working on boundaries for some years now.

I’ve noticed that most of the elder folk I interact respond to my boundaries with manipulation, anger, gaslighting, threats and violence. Some of them also blatantly ignore them in the service of what they want from me.The sociologist in me recognized this pattern and I began to wonder why it seems that folks two generations above me and older don’t understand, adapt, or even respect boundaries.

I came back to slavery.

Slave masters stripped away our ancestors' identities in order to maintain control over them. Our identities are what make our personhood real and vice versa. Our personhood, I’m learning, is defined out of our agency. Our choices, what we want, what we need, and most importantly, our ability to access our self-definition help us to define who we are as an individual.

So, how does this connect back to our ancestors?

From generation to generation, we pass on what we know. Most importantly, we pass on the skills that have allowed us to survive to this point.

Reflecting on this, I realized that the elders who have the most trouble with boundaries are three generations removed from the last generation of slavery.

I'm taking a very educated guess that most, if not all, persons who were enslaved survived by dissociation. Survival, during slavery & Jim Crow, required most people to depersonalize themselves because self-definition was met with unspeakable violence meant to "put you in your place."

Personalization requires self-advocacy. Self-advocacy requires one to face those things that threaten their sense of personhood. For our ancestors living under the oppression of slavery and Jim Crow, reclaiming personhood would include facing the daily trauma of unfreedom. One of the adaptive responses, then, was to understand survival as depersonalization. Depersonalization allows one to easily follow the rules of those who have power over them without the constant internal nagging of wanting to be free. For those who wanted to continue to live, and for whom freedom was not an option, it seems only natural that they choose depersonalization over the threat of additional violence and death.

As our ancestors conditioned themselves in this routine for survival, it became a part of their worldview and approach to life. On top of that, all they had been conditioned into by the slave masters such as lack of privacy, lack of boundaries, gaslighting, codependency, and much more also became embedded in their way of being. As a result, when preparing their children for this world and the constant threat of violence and death, it became automatic to teach depersonalization as survival skill and to unconsciously treat their children in the ways they had been treated.

I am looking forward to diving into Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Dr. Joy DeGruy and Baraccon by Zora Neale Hurston to learn more about the legacy of slavery in present day practices of Black parenting.

While this larger context makes absolute sense, we are now in a time where there is more space for bravery and self-definition. We have a chance, now, to take back out power and to to assert ourselves, fight for our rights, and dare to be who we are. Because it is in knowing who we are that we create a sense of self-pride that strengthens us, our children, and the next generation.