Check out this interesting guest post by Dr. Ana Nogales, a health and human rights advocate, on the power of women's stories, as understood through her own mother. This is one more voice to our continued exploration of generational issues, leading up to the conference this fall at the Omega Institute. We are publishing a series of guest posts as a fun way of initiating some of the speakers--who are generally new to blogging--into our exciting online community. Please make them feel welcome.
My mother never told me her whole story. She relayed pieces of it here and there, but I could tell that her pain was much greater than her measured words revealed. After marrying my father in a quasi-arranged marriage just before World War II, the two of them left Poland for South America. My mother never saw her parents again. She talked about the love she had for her father but said almost nothing about her mother. I gathered from the little she told me that her mother, my grandmother, was neglected as a child and never had a voice in her family. In our family, my mother had a voice but most of the time it was a voice of negativity. I believe that the reason for this was that my mother was never able to overcome her family's tragedy.
It was only in the last few months of her life that my mom was able to speak from her heart. She spoke of how it was in her family when she was growing up--that girls and women knew their place and couldn't deviate from that--and how the attitudes of her elders were passed on to her. She also opened up about my Jewish family's ordeal in Poland and how painful it had been for her to leave her family behind. I had known the outlines of her story but not her feelings about all that had happened. It was so important for me to finally receive the missing pieces of that story, because it was part of my own history as well.
Today, sadly, there are too many women whose voices are silenced due to discrimination and violence against women. Sometimes we keep our stories to ourselves because we don't want to burden our children with the pain of the past. But such silence doesn't allow the younger generation to learn from what their elders went through--and to strive to create change. This is why it is so crucial for grandmothers and mothers to reach out to the younger generations and share their stories, however painful they may be, so that our personal and cultural histories are not lost. And it is equally important for younger women to keep asking their mothers and grandmothers to relay the stories of their lives. As we engage in this process of intergenerational dialogue, we can begin to connect to each other at the soul level--and work together toward the goal of women's empowerment.
Bio after the jump.
Dr. Nogales is a native of Argentina and is one of the most well-known and respected Latinas in the United States. Through her private practice, media presence, numerous books, and organizational leadership, she has dedicated herself to ensuring the mental health and success of women, Latinos, and anyone else who struggles with cultural and personal issues, victimization, and inequality. After immigrating to the United States in 1979, Dr. Nogales completed her doctorate degree in psychology at the United States International University in San Diego. Dr. Nogales is the founder and Clinical Director of the nonprofit organization, Casa de la Familia, which she established for victims of crimes such as human trafficking, domestic violence, rape, sexual assault, child sexual and physical abuse. Dr. Nogales has received numerous honors and recognitions, and has had a long career of accomplishments.
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Thank you for sharing this issue from the daughter's perspective. My childhood was traumatic, most prominently marred by sexual abuse and ultimately rape. My husband and I have talked at length about whether and when to tell our children my story because their lives are so different from mine.
I've worried that burdening them with the terror I've experienced is needless. At the same time, I don't want to deny them a huge part of my story because it impacts so much of who I am from how I parent them to the work I do.
Sometimes we keep our stories to ourselves because we don't want to burden our children with the pain of the past.
This is the story of my own mother's life--carrying shame virtually all of her adult life, fearing the burden that her story would place on us, her children. I learned that my mother had a 'secret' about 10 years before she died. But I never got the full story...no details. In her case, it was an unplanned, out of wedlock pregnancy in 1960, culminating in her surrending the child for adoption. Now that she is gone, I'll never know her whole truth. But learning what I did took a decade--a decade of very carefully navigating down a painful path and what seemed to be a permanent bruise on my mother's psyche.
Ultimately, what I have learned is that deeply held secrets and the associated shame just eat away at your very core--so I continue to work very hard to have an open and honest relationship with my own daughter. I will tell her what I know of my mom's story. I will tell her the shame that she endured for decades. She will know...and hopefully learn to remain free from such shame herself...
Thanks so much for this article.