The Things We (Don’t) Talk About

Generations of women with different starts, different contexts and different paths. Moving through the past, present and future.

To be a daughter, a mother, a grandmother. How has this changed in recent years? What do we remember from our grandmothers? What does mom say about grandma as a mother? The neglect of emotions and the rigidity we felt as children and the flexible boundaries now. What has the adaptation of our grandmothers taken? A life focused on survival, not on living. Trauma shaped our ancestors when the word trauma was centered around a physical experience. A brief journey through time from the prism of now.

This is my story…

My grandmothers and great-grandmothers saw war, death, famine, regime changes and governments. They have seen how the world can turn around. And not that there is good and bad. Just so…

I have wondered what kind of mother was my great-grandmother, what kind of mother was my grandmother, what kind of mother am I?

What do we pass on through generations? What is the lesson of each generation?

Baba… what happens when you grow up in a time when faith is forbidden? What does love without faith look like? Maybe raw and scary, maybe emotionless, maybe somehow empty. No, this is not a lesson in Christianity. Faith has a broad dimension for me. What happens to the mother when she is placed in the conditions of socialist society? No, it’s not sexism.

A woman’s evolutionary gift is a combination of hormones and primary and secondary sex characteristics, which in turn lead to natural processes and conditions. It is given to the woman to feel, to connect with emotions, to recognize them in order for the family to survive. To care and recognize. To feel feelings in order to have life.

Baba – chasing career and equality in the socialist and also part of the socialist society. Different faces, similar result – children with whom we do not talk about feelings, emotions and faith. Children taught to follow the path of duty and rules. Children with a focus on survival and the future – clear and rigid. Children without much choice and with clear options.

Mom – grandma’s child. Lost early in the adult world. Childhood, free, peace to be outside and play. Today, it’s a bit close to the term neglect. Freedom without limits for children can easily grow into endless loneliness and self-nurturing. I think of the book Lord of the Flies. A generation of emotionally abandoned children. Structured and cold, but secure social…

Mom becomes Mom. A child with emotions without validation and self-regulation. Mom probably suffered from postpartum depression. Who was talking about that then? Who can I tell? I imagine horrific scenes. High floors, the baby, me… Survival – that’s what I was taught. I continue as planned – more children, more emotions without address. Words come out : Your grandmother doesn’t want you anymore, You’re a big dead girl, Your mother left you…

So much pain – generations ago. Grandmothers, often survivors of violence and gender demands, not knowing how to be mothers. Mothers, abandoned and estranged from their mothers and us and our children until today…

I… Daughter. Loved, raised in precarious financial times. Insufficient. What? It’s not clear – just everything. Carrying the legacy of great grandmothers, grandmothers and mothers, probably generations back. Confused. Internet. Flooded with information. The ethernet.

What does a woman look like today?

So many possibilities and requirements. Torn between real and imaginary images. Striving for the ideal image of mother, wife, girl, adventurer, wife, daughter, friend, lover, professional. Swimming in a sea of conflicting information, artificial intelligence, filtered photos and the ability of surgery and procedures to borrow a face or body.

What does this lead to? We don’t know… We can see the present.

The pursuit of perfection and the idea of the terror of being wrong. How does the modern mother go through this? My experience is; sleepless nights, nervousness due to looking for the best (which is a chimera), lack of support. Usually the supportive function of medical persons is contradictory, making it unsupportive. Breastfeed, don’t breastfeed, diaper, potty, water, no water, potato feed, well no better with pumpkin. Vaccines together, no better apart… Just brief examples in extensive threads. I’m not getting into the education issue at all. Where, how and how much? The painful realization that education is correcting one mistake with another… There is no right move. Nothing can be spared. Attempting perfection takes you out of touch. And I know what it’s like to be a mom from my mom and grandma and …. So different from today. And so the echoes of the past reverberate in the present.

My younger sister. I – a woman. So many possibilities. It can be from universal soldier to Barbie. Training, muscles, butt, chest, nose, face. Everything can be found. Are we talking about how come I want to be a different person? Where does the rejection I feel come from? Does it only belong to today or is it old, older than grandma…. I grew up criticizing so many people. Call it feedback, but the amplitude felt like criticism. Big nose, big butt, small breasts, you stand chubby, you’re soft, your hair is not good, it’s a little sparse. So – the evaluation is ready. I am not fit to be loved. But today I can change a lot of things out.

Are we talking about cosmetic surgery? Not for and against of course. And for that moment when I open my eyes after surgery and I’m a different person. I’ve asked for a nose, lips, neck, breasts, butt, like someone else’s and I’m just in shock. This is a different person. I’ve asked for it, I’ve paid for it, how can I say I’m horrified. So much guilt and shame… Who’s talking about that? Who is talking about the topic shrouded in criticism and shame? Who cares about the human being who is in pain and in terror because a different person is standing opposite him? Is psychological support present, targeting routine plastic surgery? But isn’t that what he wanted? This is a question that takes me back in time. Grandma’s. where I have to take what I want, without choice, without support and especially without many feelings. For if I go deeper, I will sink….

My mom’s daughter. Tick tock, selfies, real time videos… To show or not to show breasts and ass? How do I protect myself from men outside? When is interest violence? How to be innocent and a child? How do I know that the video I send to the person I think I love goes into space and starts a life of its own… Everybody has lips, I want lips too. I can get booted, everybody does. Mom works, grandma does too, and dad. Where am I? Stuck somewhere between two centuries….