We can be heroes by helping lighten the load of generational issues.
You know that I am Olivia S. Benson and I am the author of this book, For the Love of My Father, which is available on Amazon. It’s my second book. The first book is Answers from Within, and it is also available on Amazon. You can follow me at Author Olivia S. Benson on Facebook, also on Instagram, Twitter, and obviously you’re here on YouTube. It is Olivia S. Benson.
So as I said in my introductory video on Facebook and Instagram, today I’m going to be discussing a line that I used on a post this week on my Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. And the line is very simple. It says, we can be heroes by helping lighten the load of generational issues. Now there’s a lot tied up in that single line, and hopefully you’ve seen the post and what I wrote about it on Facebook and Instagram. But I want to break it down into several pieces.
First of all, when I talk about the generational issues, depending on what your family history is, your ancestral history or origin, however you want to say it, you are definitely bringing down a series of issues through the generations. And that happens particularly when the issues are not addressed, the issues are not healed. How exactly it happens, whether it’s in the DNA, whether it’s by socialization, nobody has any absolute proof. But we do know that we can see certain patterns of behavior repeating themselves over and over again.
There’s Some Issues Coming Down the Line
And if you’re not new to the channel and to my discussion, you know that I do spend in the book a fairly significant amount of time discussing the fact that with regards to fatherhood, particularly with some — remember I said it, some — people of African descent, there’s some issues related to the effects, the post-traumatic stress and other traumas related to slavery, which seem to be affecting how men of African descent father, or how they’ve learned to father, or how they haven’t learned to father.
So that is a subject in and of itself. And if you saw the video last week, you know how excited I am about a subscriber named relearningmanhood on Instagram, and the fact that he — and I’m not suggesting that his issues are related to slavery, because I haven’t spoken to him as yet — but he says, we sort of have to relearn how to be men and how to be fathers so that we won’t hurt our children.
So generally speaking, we know just by observation that there’s some issues coming down the line. And it’s just such an amazing time in human history, because once we get to the point where we understand that life is much more than what we see with our eyes, now we can really discover the keys to healing various issues, including this one, which is obviously something that’s close to me. Meaning, if there are generational issues, wherever they originated, now we understand that there’s spiritual law that can be used to heal those issues so that they don’t continue to be passed down the line and so that people don’t continue to suffer.
And This, I Think, Is Heroic
The thing is that we have to decide that we are ready to take this journey. That, number one, we agree and understand that there is an issue that needs to be healed, and then do whatever work is necessary to actually heal the issues. And this, I think, is heroic.
It could be considered heroic because we’re not just doing it for ourselves. If we choose to have children, we choose to reproduce, it’s important that we take them into consideration. There’s so many things in my life that I heard either my mother or my grandmother say that, in retrospect, I know were not things that would be for, let’s say, my highest good.
I also know that there were things that they were taught by their parents and probably a few generations before them. But as we come into this time in human history, it’s a time where we can really review where things are coming from. It’s a time where we can come up with alternatives. We don’t have to accept that because seven generations before believed that a certain thing was a certain way, that we have to accept it.
It Just Takes One Person in the Generational Line
In the book, I have a section where I talk about the fact that my maternal grandmother, she loved to cook in a particular way. I mean, it was pig tails, cow foot, pig’s feet. She made heavy soups and things along those lines. And that was a way that she had been raised. And I, to some extent, can say, okay, maybe that’s a generational history of eating food that maybe slaves were fed, or people who worked, labored, were fed.
Well, my mother came along and eventually she said, no, we don’t eat that. And as a result of my mother’s change in her belief system and her thinking — well, I don’t eat that. And my son doesn’t eat that.
So as I say in the book as well, it just takes one person in the generational line to make a change, to sort of wake up and realize that we don’t have to take the history and live with it in a particular way. What is important though, is that it takes work. It’s not something that happens automatically.
You Must Make Up Your Bed
Because just waking up and realizing that I’m not going to accept certain things that were taught — I remember when I was much younger, my grandmother used to say, you must make up your bed. And if you don’t make up your bed, you’re worthless in the morning. Well, that was in my head, like seriously in my head. You got to make up your bed. And if you’re a woman and you get up in the morning and you don’t make up your bed, you’re worthless, so to speak, because that was her story.
Well, eventually I realized, wait a second, I need to get up. I got to go to work. I got to deal with a child, and I got to do a whole bunch of things. So if on a particular day I happen not to be able to make up my bed, or I need somebody to help me make up my bed, that does not make me a worthless woman. So I have to revise in my head.
And a lot of these things are, number one, subconscious. Number two, they’ve been sort of programmed into you over years and years from the time that you were a child. Now, the thing about it is that you get to the point where you realize it’s not serving you. And in fact, in many cases is causing you damage.
You Have to Make a Personal Decision
And I got to the point where the damage that I could observe in myself, I for sure did not want to see repeated in any child of mine. And that was enough for me. It was enough for me to say, you know what, I don’t want any child of mine to go through and suffer the things that I have suffered.
And so I was willing, for myself, because I didn’t want to continue to suffer mentally, physically, emotionally, because of things that had been passed down — because of, in this particular case, the messages that my dad had given me by his behavior about what a man was, or what a girl was to her father.
And you have to make a personal decision. Nobody can make it for you. Nobody can heal you. Nobody can take you through the path. And it’s not always necessarily an easy path. And it’s not always necessarily a quick path. So you have to make the decision that this is something that you want to do.
And aside from doing it for yourself, for your healing, the next thing is really to do it for those, your direct children, others around you — but the bottom line is to do it to help those coming behind you. Because you have the ability now, we have the resources now, we know more about life on the planet than we ever did. We know more now about spirituality and how life works from the spiritual perspective. And we have the resources in order to go in and do the things that we need to do to heal ourselves.
They Didn’t Have a Tenth of the Resources
And so for me, it seems that those before — and in the book, I also talk about the fact that I had a lot of things to say in my mind about why my grandparents didn’t do this, or why they didn’t do that. But then at a point I got to realize, wait a second, they didn’t have not even a tenth of the resources that I have available. In fact, not only did my grandparents not have those resources, my dad didn’t have those resources.
And now I have them. So I could think anything I want to think about what they should have done. I wasn’t in their shoes. And I could be, since we talk about dads all the time and all the time and what they did and didn’t do — I could be mad at my dad all I want to, but that’s absolutely in the past. But what I have is this now moment. And I have resources to help me do what I need to do at the most important level, which is the spiritual level.
And so that’s why this particular line: we can be heroes by helping lighten the load of generational issues. You can now be that person that makes the difference in your children’s lives, in your family’s lives, and say, no, this is it. I’m willing. I’m going to do the work, and I’m going to change this for the future.
The book is For the Love of My Father, and it’s available on Amazon. I am Olivia S. Benson — the S is important. I have a website, OliviaSBenson.com, where I have products and other things that I’ve written. And I am on Facebook, Author Olivia S. Benson, and on Twitter and Instagram, also Olivia S. Benson.