Healing a Lineage Through Time Travel
By Intisar Seraaj
I wish I could time travel, but just to the past, limited to time streams connected to myself, my family, and my ancestors.
Side note: Isn’t it funny how I can say “my family” and “my ancestors” like they’re two different entities. You know what I mean. “My family” looks like my parents, siblings, aunts and uncles, and cousins — people I know, people I can fathom in my mind, people who I know existed for sure. While “my ancestors” are family members I’ve never met, don’t know what they look like, and can only have faith that they existed, rather than knowing for sure exactly who they are. This is exactly why it’s important to document your life story for your descendants, so you can feel like a more tangible family member rather than a mystical ancestor who only resides in my heart, hope, dreams, and thoughts. This is where I shamelessly plug my business Storytelling By Seraaj, a digital storytelling company specializing in preserving family histories by capturing and producing biographical stories.
Now, back to time travel.
I’d like to travel to when I was a child to see the childhood trauma I’ve buried, so I can begin a deeper healing process. I could be gentler and more empathetic with myself that way, the way I try to be with others when they share their past pain manifesting as sadness, anger, and pettiness. Maybe I’ll also catch glimpses of my siblings’ traumas too because I’m unaware of their perspectives many a time. I’d like to understand why we all feel so alone while together. We grew up in the same household but experienced different things. Maybe we have shared trauma and joy that I don’t remember. Seeing those would unite us towards a shared healing goal.
I’d like to travel to my past to see how my parents raised me, so I can appreciate them more for the excellent job they’ve done. I could also begin to see the cracks and imperfections of their humanity, so I can be more understanding of all parents and maybe children, too. It would be a case study of where they went right and where they went wrong; A case study of why I’m the epitome of Black excellence and still bear the shame placed on me by white society and the man-made patriarchal stains on the pure and peaceful religion of Islam. I want to see why I’m free, yet still held captive.
I’d like to travel to my past to remember the good times in childhood when my older brother and I were equal playmates and when I was my eldest brother’s little, protected baby. I want to see why my sisters have such a difficult time allowing me to be grown now. How long was I their little baby doll? They helped me to walk and crawl, played with me, dressed me, babysat me, and changed my diapers. I’m a visual learner and I’d like access to the images that might increase my gratitude to each member of the nucleus of the village who raised me. I’d like to see a time where we were less convoluted by the weight of adulthood, expectations, and quiet suffering.
Especially, I’d like to time travel to my parents’ pasts. I yearn to know their history. They share little about themselves with me and my siblings. They repeat the same strategically chosen stories of their childhood, leaving out their own trauma to never slander their parents. It’s not that I want them to slander their beloveds. I only want to know the truth of who they came from and why they are the way they are. I want to know them for real. I’m not scared to see the ugliness because I already peep bits of ugliness — something all of us have. Humans are ugly when we hurt each other. Somehow, we all, at some point, find a mate, whether enduring or temporary, and can look past that ugliness and those scars to see the beauty underneath that the Creator intended us to be. I want my parents to just be, and I’d like to see who they are and could be without the scarring of a childhood they couldn’t control, without the blatant and systemic hate and jealously they faced from the world, and without deeply burrowed sorrow and degradation.
I only want to understand how we got the family patterns we have, to better understand how to break these generational curses. It’s a task I think about often and bare on my shoulders. Man, would it be easier if I could only time travel.
