Emotional Neglect

Okay--I'm gonna get vulnerable with you all. This is something personal, but very purposeful for me and those I've encountered in my lifetime that have been affected by this. This is a moment for awareness and the beginning of healing. I love you all.

By definition emotional neglect is "a form of child abuse, and is a deficit in meeting a child's basic needs, including the failure to provide adequate health care, supervision, clothing, nutrition, housing as well as their physical, emotional, social, educational and/or safety needs."

This is something I've gone through personally, and continue to 'til this very day. I think it's important that we acknowledge where it begins. Therefore it ends with us--which keeps it from becoming a generational curse. As a child. One's upbringing/homelife/parenting or better yet, the lack thereof. Mentally, I grew up to think this was normal, but soulfully and emotionally.. I was never sound.

This wasn't brought to my attention as an actual term and trauma of my own until last night a young man shared with me his story. For privacy purposes, one of his parents completely disregarded his presence. No hugs, no kisses, no how was your day at school today, not even a glance. He described to me how lifeless and almost as if his parent was dead to life itself. Emotionless... Heartless... Vividly, he explained how difficult it was to even speak about the issue--the silence made him silent. Those moments he chose to speak out seemed to be the most threatening to his protection because how many people minimize the situation for their own comfortability. He gave me this example: Kids coming to school talking about how their mom or dad was a crackhead.

Just one word and everybody got the picture, but when it comes to an emotionally absent parent, how can you explain that without being misunderstood? People would permit themselves to saying "everybody has their days they don't get along with their parents...you should suck it up... you're being dramatic...maybe they had a rough week."

All of these statements are minimisations (denial of rationalizations) and distortions to a true silent epidemic that occurs within the African American community.

Many of our parents may biologically be our parents, but aren't fulfilling the true divine roles as parents. I know so many people who have physically absent parent(s), emotionally absent parent(s), mentally absent parent(s). His story is not the only one, and neither is mine, nor will our stories be the last until we all do something about it.

Being the youngest of 4 with elder military parents--emotions don't matter, it's all about productivity. What can you contribute to the table at the end of the day? Results only. I remember many days being so sad as a child. Lonely. It truly felt like I was the only child given my siblings were always much older than me. The family dynamic never felt like home--I was always getting bullied with names because I was obese. I lacked emotional support from home and I see how that has created an issue leading me to look elsewhere for emotional support. I went through many phases of toxic tendencies of rebellion in order to feel "okay". Drinking wouldn't do it, smoking wouldn't do it, sex wouldn't do it, money wouldn't do it. I had to realize the world had nothing to offer me when it came to my trauma of emotional neglect from my home life. That's why it's so important for us to have a personal relationship with our creator. A good friend of mines' grandfather said, "it's easy to go back." The knowledge of the truth is what makes me free from going back even though I'm still emotionally neglected with them, my Heavenly Father says otherwise. You and I are loved so much!

The realization I had to face was that this was my truth, but it wasn't my fault and for you all who can relate, I'm here to tell you it is not your fault. The only thing I can control is what I do with this knowledge and understanding. So I decided to create this blog post to provide a start as to awareness to this underlying issue as well as a safe place to know we can discuss these things without anyone judging you. It's just you and me--completely confidential and always intentional with your best interest in heart, mind, body, and soul.

I will have the comments open on this post if you'd like to share anything publicly with the Time For Tea Family❤️