It dawned on me, that when I was asked the question or, whenever I am asked question, where are your roots from? Or where are your parents from? My response has been typically the Caribbean, i thought nothing of it.

What I recently realised and have been made aware of through the understanding of others, is that although I know that we are descendants of slaves and that we have mixed blood lines with our historic slave owners, the real issue is my answer all my usual answer, which has been psychologically truncated and did not go far enough.

I failed to realise this was not a full answer which is, where my original roots are from, is actually via two joining lineages, that is further complicated when adding all the other cultures DNAs blended and mixed into the DNA stew within the Caribbean, however the original roots still lead me back to both the United Kingdom (historical slave owners) and Africa (via the United Kingdom slavery of Africans).

The shocking truth is that I share the ancestral blood of those who enslaved Africans.

When you think of family ancestry, they’re just childlike understandings and  romanticism , in my case it was of it being a dark-skinned family and being just a dark-skinned African lineage. However because of the reality of the dual origins of my DNA ancestry, the United Kingdom (historical slave owners) side of me, has to be viewed as my ‘family lineage’ also, through my DNA bloodline, which is a shocking thing to truly, emotionally and mentally acknowledge, that very slave owners and oppressors, are actually and technically my DNA family lineage. We silently and quietly suppressed, buried and just generally accepted this inner conflict, without really addressing the emotional and mental turmoil inside of us.

In my head I understand that I have technically and legally a DNA family bloodline to my ancestors slave owners in the United Kingdom, however emotionally and psychologically I have not been prepared for this and I have not been allowed to prepare for this culturally from both the light-skinned European slave owners from the United Kingdom, and also by the Caribbean psychological resentment of 400 years of slavery that has trickled down through generational ideology and generational ideas of culture.

Racism, and the racist ideology that sits behind this, vs. who I am as a dark skin toned person with multicultural lineage, stemming from slave owners who are the embodiment of racism, has not been acknowledged, discussed, fully comprehended, fully explored and fully understood.

This psychological and emotional dichotomy of everything outlined above, is buried deep within, and has not yet had a voice, or the experience shared, or has not been given the ability to be expressed, or has not been given the opportunity to be shared, or fully understood  psychologically, emotionally, spiritually and mentally, within societies.

How do we give voice to this? 

How do we mentally emotionally spiritually cope with this will deal with this?

There is a big section being shied away from, consisting of emotional and mental health, that is missing and the conversation, that needs to be expressed and discussed, as to the impact that this non-voiced major unaddressed area, has on the descendants of African slaves and slave owners, that is not talked about.

What is our hidden emotional and mental health condition. plus welfare?

How does this affect our mental health?

This area of psychology has not been put on the table or explored or even discussed, why not?

It is a horrendous area of mental health, that has been hidden, papered over, it is atrocious. We have expected children to develop with this awful knowledge with this horrible horrible infringement on her mental health, and yet society thinks that’s okay?

This parallel, balancing act, assessment, trauma, to the outwardly expected normal thought processes, is a disgraceful dereliction of duty of societies who have caused this and perpetuate this, who have not apologised or taken action to correct it.

It is hard to embrace the shocking truth, that you have the bloodline of slave owners and racists, that you are physically through blood, tied to heartless people, who did not see Africans as human beings for 400 years and beyond.

Where is our mental health support to this damning, emotionally debilitating and mentally damaging condition?