When I was a little girl, my mother always told me, “You’re acting like your father, stop it!” or “You have a mouth like your father.” At times, she would say it with a laugh and other times, with fear in her voice and I concluded that these were all negative traits of my father. Somewhere between eight to 12 years old I knew my family’s dynamic was not normal, even though everyone construed it with traditional family values. The older I got, the more I was greeted with the same old nonchalant way of dismissing the elephant in the room by saying “That’s the way he has always been” about the men in my family. I soon came to realize, the phrase “That’s the way he has always been,” was an untouchable concept towards the men in my family.
The “he” in question would be a “Machismo man,” because that is the stereotype that the men in my family fall under. “Machismo” is a term where someone is avoidant and hyper masculine. I would give my opinion and say these type of men are robbed from showing emotion and are given the supposed blueprint on “how to be a man.”
Studies have been done on the machismo culture and Melissa Carcamo, a TedTalk speaker and Chicano Studies Researcher, exposed the concept of redefining masculinity. She also says that “if there’s a will, there’s a way, where men can tap into feminist manhood.”
“I did not want to believe that it (men being men) was biological. There had to be more to the picture,” Carcamo said. After much reflection on her own trauma with hyper-masculine men, Carcamo questioned if masculinity could be a trauma response.
With this epiphany, Carcamo started interviewing males about a time where they felt like they had to change who they were. She says this is when she developed sympathy for the culture. She also says while it doesn’t justify abuse, she has learned why men are so detached. “When 99% of men are being told not to cry, they are going to build distrust with that emotion.”
It roots from family values, gender roles, conformed traditions; writing the same story generations after generations; passing down the one “blueprint” to both men and women— that is refreshing the trauma cycles.
FEMINIST MANHOOD
Carcamo emphasizes the concept of Feminist Manhood with one objective: It’s no longer about what’s going to make you a man, but what’s going to make you happy.
As much as gender roles are in the veins of society, what will be on the other side? “The trauma you have experienced from other men is because of (the) patriarchy,” Carcamo explained. “Feminists understand trauma… the pain that you feel won’t be healed by your ‘bros’ it will probably put the knife deeper in your back.”
That is the exact thing that keeps me up at night; wondering when men will learn to love. I think it might take them all my life to unlearn a trait they were raised with. Growing up, I idolized these men, because I mirrored the women in my family accepting and loving the way that men “loved” them. The endless cycle of giving aftercare following the verbal and physical abuse by bringing home flowers, the makeup dinners, the materialistic purchases only for their old machismo ways to resurface.
Carcamo challenges men to think of who they were before they had to become a man. She also raises awareness for the men that keep their machismo behavior; what will they face at the end of their lifetime?
INHERITED SKELETONS
I was raised in the far east side of El Paso, Texas. It wasn’t until I was 8-years-old that I was introduced to another sibling. Growing up I noticed that my half-sister was the spitting image of my dad. In comparison to what my mother always told me, my “sister” taught me it was okay to act like our dad by using our loud voices, harboring rage, and being impatient.
After she was away for nearly a decade, I grew to realize that my father’s behavior was still meshed into her as it is in me. My naivete helped me notice that the deeper her trauma infected our home as she grew older, the more I saw that she was a compulsive liar.
She abruptly left after being in our home for years, abandoning her little sister (me), and it hardly seemed like a second thought. At 10 years old, after coming home from school to an empty house, no note, no voicemail. I called her for hours on end, until I reached the disconnect tone. My “sister” had changed her number. It was then I knew that my three step-siblings from my mother’s side loved me more than she ever could. Instinctively, I made the decision that my half-sister from my father’s side, did not deserve to be called my “sister” anymore.
FLIPPING NARRATIVES
So how did I break this generational cycle between my father’s daughter and the household I grew up in? It was not an easy talk with my parents. They understood the premise of the damage her presence instilled in me, but they were avoidant to the truth of my narrative. Between my sister leaving and understanding I had trauma, it wasn’t until I took La Chicana 3301 taught by Josefina Carmona that I began to not only take a college class, but I began to process over a decade of personal trauma. Carmona’s class became an unexpected therapy session to talk about topics that were taboo at home.
“In La Chicana 3301, we focus on Chicana feminist epistemology, addressing issues faced by Latinas, including toxic masculinity, gender roles, bilingualism, immigration, and religion,” said Carmona.
Healing starts with self-reflection; analyzing the systems that are created in the homes we were raised in. “Be curious. Share information. Start small. Think about asking your family questions about why they do certain things. I think people will be surprised that you use it as a learning opportunity,” Carmona said.
There is so much to consider than oneself, there is room for healing a lineage of your ancestors when breaking these generation trauma cycles. But Carmona emphasizes beginning the healing journey will benefit the future generations.
There is a certain belief that these awakenings will happen for each Hispanic living through generational trauma. As a result of La Chicana, both of my parents really took accountability as individuals and as parents. As they had their awakenings to how trauma affected them and their family, what was revealed was that my father was equally heartbroken that my half-sister left him again, and my mother was painfully fighting for her marriage because the longer this trauma lingered and attached, the more the household they built for their children was rotting from the inside out.
FACING SKELETONS
It’s more than not holding grudges and resentment with trauma and pain. But it’s about facing the topics that generations before you have always avoided.
Due to therapy, I can finally say thank you to trauma. I am able to look at these family skeletons and acknowledge and address them with intention and openness. Most importantly, thank you for showing me what not to look for in a sister, for teaching me what not to be, as a sister and as a person, and for showing me what I do not want in life, in friendship and family.
Sitting with trauma involves removing the internal self (my inner child) was once so grounded in, and now appears to only manifest in my half-sister. I may be my father’s daughter, but I am not her sister.
I’ve made that distinguished line between I am not her, and I will never be her. My father can say the same thing after years of her leaving the family again. I believe he’s a better man for it, and the man that he is now, I am so very grateful that she didnt get to be a part of his transformational change like I did.
To say that I forgive my father, yet not forget the trauma that still is festering in his soul even today, there is still a lot to digest.
Forgiveness is about choosing myself. To live for my younger self and heal her, so I can heal my present and future. Forgiveness is about writing a new narrative, rather than rewriting the same redundant story. To begin, I am focused on understanding my triggers and how to process them. Ultimately understanding that the goal of any emotion is to simply be felt and passed.
There is no end-all-be-all for healing, that victory is meant to be open-ended. Because at the end of the day, my half-sister and I are still my father’s daughters.
We may not have a choice in the matter of who our family is, but something that we can grow to accept is normalizing cutting off family members. To know when to simply walk away, when something or someone is not serving you anymore, is something that I can live with, but others can’t, so go ahead and leave the skeletons in the closet.
As much as I wrote this healing piece for me, I did it for my father.
Thank you Mom & Dad.
