Transcription
This one is for my mother. We've had these conversations. She knows I'm doing the series and she knows that Gen X is next. And she told me, "Say what you need to say." So, here it is.
I see you, Mom. I see what you're still carrying. I see you trying so hard to unlearn what nobody ever gave you the words for. And yeah, this may sting, but it comes from a place of love and from the hope that healing doesn't stop with us. It moves through us.
Gen X didn't yell. They just vanished. You grew up watching it all. The violence, the silence, the dysfunction. And you learned to go quiet so you wouldn't make it worse. No one asked you how you were doing. No one taught you what love actually felt like. You became the therapist, the fixer, the peacekeeper because being invisible was safer than being honest.
And when you became parents, you tried to do better, but silence was your first language. You didn't scream, you just left the room. You didn't say I love you. You just assumed we knew. You raised us on autopilot, present, but not connected. Around, but not with us. And we learned to read the mood before we read books. We learned to shut down before we could open up. Because your stillness wasn't peace, it was avoidance.
And now we're adults trying to feel whole after being raised by people who looked calm but were drowning inside. You weren't cold. You were terrified. But you never said it. And we felt every word you didn't speak. You thought silence was protection. But all we ever wanted was to feel safe enough to speak.
These men ain't. And the generation that taught them stillness meant strength. You disappeared before we ever had the chance to be held.