Mothering Myself: Healing Through Generations of Pain
by Jemmar Samuels
bell hooks writes, “We cannot claim to love if we are hurtful and abusive.” Love and abuse cannot coexist. Abuse and neglect are, by definition, the opposites of nurturance and care.”
This is something that I think about often, whether it’s true or not. On the days in which I allow myself to believe it is true, it’s mainly a comfort to myself, I allow my mother, and my family to be voided of all responsibilities of their treatment of me, because you see there was no love there. On days when I think this is a lie, I believe that love and abuse can coexist. I battled with which one came first, which one was intentional or for my mother, which one mattered most.
It’s a very hard pill to swallow and in all honesty it is one in which I have the unfortunate circumstance of having to swallow every day, love from my mother, the kind that is pure and unconditional is not something she can give to me and probably never will.
It is not lost on me that this is generational, as an Afro-Caribbean person, who knows what has been passed down generationally, what had been held in the bodies of my ancestors, in the wombs of the womxn within my lineage. The history of enslavement, systemic oppression, and generational trauma has profoundly shaped the mother I have, manifesting in resilience, silence, and survival-driven parenting. I cannot recall my maternal grandmother in much detail, but I can recall that her relationship with my mother, her daughter was far from healthy.
Not having a loving mother is hard, but deciding not to have a relationship with her at times can be even harder. Those around me, family, friends, even associates and acquaintances, if they hear enough will provide the same unsolicited and unoriginal advice, “but you only get one mother” but she only got one me, or am I so disposable?
In the absence of my mother, I realise that she has impacted every aspect of my life, from the partners I choose or don’t, to what goals and ambitions I have set for myself [really for her], how much or how little I love, care and nurture myself.
I hold the tension of knowing that my mother loves me, yet her love—shaped by her own wounds, her own constraints—has often felt like harm, forcing me to untangle care from pain and redefine what love truly means for me.
I do not want to make excuses for her, never. But it’s not lost on me, that I was raised in a lineage where survival trumped tenderness, she carried the burden of unhealed wounds—navigating single motherhood, financial instability, and societal barriers designed to keep Black women in cycles of exhaustion.
Being in community with my chosen family, embracing community care, is an act of resistance against the systemic injustices that have long denied my ancestors the privilege of love, care, healing, and thriving on their own terms.
Love has saved my life—not the love I was born into, but the love I have chosen and that has chosen me in return. My chosen family, my friends, have fed me when I had nothing, clothed me when I had nowhere to turn, and housed me when the world felt unbearable. They have poured their resources, their time, their effort into me, not out of obligation, but because they see me as worthy. They have given me unconditional love, unconditional care, unconditional kindness, unconditional support, and unconditional grace. And it hasn’t just been in my darkest moments, it’s been in the quiet, everyday moments too, when I didn’t even realize I needed it. They remind me, simply by being who they are, that love isn’t something I have to earn. It’s something I deserve, just by existing. I would not be alive today without them.
I have spent my life reckoning with a mother who could not love me the way I needed, with generational wounds that stretch back to ancestors stolen from their homeland and forced to survive in a world built to break them. But survival is not the end of my story. Love is. I am redefining love for myself, on my terms. I am shaping my family in my own image, in a way that nurtures, sustains, and heals.
Community care from my chosen family has become my refuge, my salvation, my proof that love—real, boundless, liberating love—exists. And in receiving it, I am healing my inner child, showing them that they were always worthy of tenderness, always worthy of joy.
Love did not fail me. It simply found me in a different form, in the arms of those who choose me every single day. And in being in community with my chosen family, I am not only breaking cycles of harm and abandonment, but I am also stepping into a love that nurtures me, sustains me, and supports me on my journey to loving myself fully.
