#LifeInLeggings

 

i got wind of this. and it spurred something immensely valuable.

["#LifeInLeggings: Being afraid to ask your mother, sister, Tanty, Nennen their stories because you scared to tell them yours."]

#LifeInLeggings:

#LifeinLegginsPaternalI know my paternal grandmother and paternal aunt's life stories. I have shared it numerous times. My grandmother was raped at fifteen working as a domestic in a family house by the father, husband. My aunt was raped at fifteen as well after she was harassed endlessly at school from about the age of ten by a male teacher. When I asked her if she could not tell anyone, thinking of my grandmother and great grandmother, she said, "tell who?" in a derisive tone indicating the powerlessness of women, (back then?) (any different now?) and the effect of a male-less household.

i also know the story of my father's niece, my cousin, who told me that it was her mother, my aunt, my father's sister, who palmed her off to a considerably older guy, a neighbor who registered his interest in my cousin. i believe she was thirteen or so and he eighteen or something to that effect.

I realize from this memory and stimulus to rememeber these stories that my father['s family of women are way more honest and authentic than my maternal family/

#LifeInLeggingsMaternal: from a little girl, before I left trinidad, i had a dream that i remember to now and I am fiftyone, of walking up a mountainside with my payol grandmother and coming upon a small shed that seemed to be the size of an outhouse and an old man coming out and having the distinct feeling in the dream, at that young age of five or under seven for sure, that he was coming for us, but it was my grandmother who was in danger. like i sensed he had raped, violated or interfered with her, and we needed to run. from that young age. i think i was born, sent and came, knowing sensing things.

On the same side of my mother's family, i had an older cousin who told me in a fit of drunk and moment that her older brother interfered with her when they were young, she did not indicate nor give any intimation of what that interference meant or its extent.

In a recent conversation of another mutual cousin, she was discussing how she changed as she was growing up, how she used to be feminine as a little girl and all of a sudden get boyish. and in the hearing my spirit told me and i shared that she was interfered with.. violated somehow. my cousin, despite her big status at various jobs, always looks a mess, from hair to clothes, and give her a chance, just off the rails.

#LifeInLeggingsMe: It is only late in life, in the last thirteen years in trinidad, and the last three years am I so crystal clear on the pandemic sexual abuse, rape and violation is of women. they almost all have stories. including my closest friend now that resulted in her first child. Living in trinidad, I have come to understand and know how rampant it is for male boys, male children and young males to be too sexually violated, raped and abused. But they do not have the luxury to tell, not even their girlfriends. I even know of a grown man who was abused by his wife, she withholding sex and using it as a control lever. His girlfriend at the time confided in me that story. I only now realize how perverted most are. And because of these stories I realize how incredibly protected, covered, and lucky I have been. #LifeInLeggingsMe: My father told me/us, my brother and I, he who died at eighteen, so imagine all that time prior, I was twenty two. that long time he wanted to leave our mother but he never did to stay in protection of us, so that no one would come and interfere with us. But i never knew when he said it what he meant, and I never asked. Only age brought reason. only my current awareness brought truth. #LifeInLeggingsMe: I have two nieces to try to school instruct and protect the same way. And their grandmother been telling them ever since small, to tell and talk if anyone touches them wrongly. I learned a lot from their grandmother. That her mother, my grandmother Maria, the one who i had the dream on the hill with, though married to a policeman and family titan, Never Left her Girl Children with their Father. NEVER. that was shocking. When my sister traveled for work, my mother would keep the girls at home base, not leave them in the care of their father!!!

I have learned a lot of what life can be in leggings.
And I am glad I know my family women's stories, some of them.
My story is theirs
And I am grateful I was sent to break that line.