In a 1990s world where we’d been taught not to see colour, brown boy met white girl. We were friends, but more than that was controversial. His family disapproved; took him away, kept him away. It was hard, and lonely.
All the ancestral narratives and histories intertwined, but unaware, our youthful idealism didn’t understand. We were star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, separated by force. And in that time apart, we turned to God, to the faith friends introduced us to, the faith of her past, itself loaded with colonial overtones of which we were naively ignorant. This only made things between him and his family more difficult ….
We prayed we could be together. We prayed for strength to stand up to ‘them’, prayed for a brave new world, a brave new love. Of course, his parents reacted, fighting for their own plans for him, their own desire to keep their culture alive. And we resisted. We didn’t understand. All the history, all the pain and grief, racism and antipathy that ran beneath. We were so young; we thought it unfair. We are all the same. We don’t see colour. We are the future. And the church, our faith, supported our belief, so we ‘othered’ his family, in just the same way as his family ‘othered’ her.
Father forgive …..
It has been over 25 years, four sons have been born, and still the rift, the damage, pain, and misunderstanding lingers. The rejection and painful exclusion. Damaged souls. Anxiety. The loss of place, community, belonging.
Yet it is my husband who has taught me most about reconciliation …. In a world where Brexit and BLM have opened difficult conversations.
Repeatedly, he would ask in church, “But what is forgiveness? How do we live that out? What does it mean to forgive? What does it mean to be reconciled?”
And he would go, like a lamb into a lions’ den, risking painful rejection, time after time to try and talk to his parents, to mend things. Often emotionally battered, it was hard, costly. But he persevered, and managed some level of reconnection with his father before he died last year.
“My father wasn’t proud of me,” was all he said.
It is a dreadful thing we were innocently caught in, leaving him isolated from his place, his people …. In white space, too often overlooked, othered, tokenised. We are in-between people. I struggle to forgive my younger self, our rhetoric, our arrogance, our ignorance, our naivete.
How do we manage the revelation of our naïve culpability in oppressive and destructive behaviour?
How do we heal the fault-lines that fall down the centre of our marriages and families, indeed through our very selves?
3 comments
Alice, thank you for sharing so honestly the hurt and shame that is within your family and your husbands and yours histories and how they fit in bigger colonial legacies. I balance what you share here with the stories I’ve heard already about your home schooling, about the commitment and love and tending that is also at the heart of your family life. It takes bravery to hold the complexities. And to forgive our younger selves for the decisions we make. I find this is one of the keys to trying to be an anti-racist white person. My white fragility shows up most when I’m in the company of someone who reminds me of my younger naive self who was quite white savior-y and wanted to save the world be a justice warrier but couldn’t face her own complicity and contradictions. When I meet people like younger me I cringe and try to control their words so they don’t accidentally say the wrong things like I did but they will learn in their own way and time. And by forgiving ourselves we can come to terms with impossible complexity. It is sad to hear your husbands father was not proud of him, but like you say it took such courage to still go to see them and show them live and now he can parent himself and you can both parent your children in imperfect but ambitious ways, cantering reconciliation and doing the best we can.
Alice, thank you for sharing your moving and powerful journey with your husband and family. It means even more reading it now, after doing the resilience exercise with you and through our conversations and laughter together. Thank you for speaking the very honest questions. I resonate much with them. I am thankful to be walking alongside you in this pilgrimage and would love to hear more of your thoughts on this in the next residential.
Alice,
I honor your heart’s openness and search.
As you ask your question, “How do we heal the fault line” I hear desire, and a deep longing for forgiveness and peace that resonates within me. The harm from our innocence (our naivety) stings our hearts. I honor your struggle to name such unconsciousness, and then, vulnerably offer it back as an offering of love.
Love restores though sometimes not quickly enough.
May your search bring peace.