Terri Rivera, Guest Columnist
It is hard when you have generations of broken toys.
They say it takes a village to raise a child. If your village does not have the necessary resources to build that child, we end up with broken pieces – and broken adults. It is not any one person’s fault.
At birth, we receive valuable tools, specifically our senses of touch, taste, sound, sight, and smell. All are connected to our emotions, our thoughts about ourselves, and our self-esteem. If we have generation after generation that are not taught about gentle touch, or the feeling of warmth and safety, we will not trust those senses as we grow.
The same with taste, sound, sight, and smell; the loss of the idea that the world can nurture all these senses and show us a way that could give us contentment, satisfaction, and peace of mind, all of which give a person the ability to live with a sense of being enough. Without this, we would continue to patch up broken pieces with dirt, or putty, or with tape that does not hold, and end up losing important parts of us.
So, even if the village does not know what tools to hand down or how to repair or prepare that child, the adult in you can give the child in you, zip ties, duct tape, and gorilla glue so you can break away from generations of not knowing how to mend, and, more importantly, stop passing the wrong tools down to new generations.
Love your children and be a part of a village that has a well stocked tool shed. Change their future instead of trying to change your past.
It is hard to change our ways, when those ways have been a norm in our lives for so long, but the strength we gain in the process can get us through. Give that strength to a child and they will not have to live as a broken adult. ■