On Motherhood, Memory, and the Inheritance of Fear
A reflection inspired by Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo’s Ben’Imana
What happens when the very thing we believe is protecting our children becomes the weight that keeps them from living freely? I have been sitting with this question. Not simply as a mother raising four daughters, but as a woman who understands that motherhood is as much an act of remembering as it is an act of becoming. We carry our children long before they are born. In our bodies, in our imaginations, in the quiet conversations we have with the futures we hope they will inherit.
And somewhere along the way, we begin carrying other things for them, too. Our fears. Our disappointments. Our unfinished dreams. The warnings passed down from women who loved us fiercely but whose own lives were shaped by circumstances they could neither control nor escape. We inherit their vigilance and sometimes mistake it for wisdom. But what happens when the wisdom of our survival becomes the limitation of someone else’s freedom?
That is the question I found myself wrestling with while reflecting on Ben’Imana, the debut feature by Rwandan filmmaker Marie-Clémentine Dusabejambo. The film introduces us to Vénéranda, a survivor of the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. Having endured unimaginable violence, she has dedicated herself to the difficult work of reconciliation, leading a circle of women through the painful process of confronting their trauma and pursuing forgiveness. There is something profoundly beautiful about a woman who has witnessed humanity at its most devastating choosing to believe in its capacity to heal.
I admired her. I felt compassion for her. And yet, I was frustrated by her. Because when Vénéranda discovers her daughter’s pregnancy, the compassion she extends so generously to others becomes difficult to summon within the walls of her own home. The woman who creates space for other women to confront their wounds struggles to create that same space for her own child.
And I found myself confronting an uncomfortable truth. I recognized something of myself in her. Not in the extraordinary circumstances of her suffering, which belong to a history and experience I cannot claim as my own, but in the familiar contradictions of motherhood. The deep desire to protect our children. The instinct to intervene before they experience pain. The difficulty of watching them make choices we might not have made ourselves. And the fear that what we know about the world may be precisely what they have yet to discover.
Why is it sometimes easier to extend grace to a stranger than to someone whose very existence feels like an extension of our own? Perhaps because our children do not simply awaken our love. They awaken our memories. They confront us with the lives we lived, the choices we made, the dangers we survived, and the versions of ourselves we have spent years trying to understand. And suddenly, what appears to be a mother’s anger may be something far more complicated.
Fear. Not necessarily fear of what has happened, but fear of what might happen next. Fear informed by a past that has already demonstrated how quickly the world can become unsafe. Fear that whispers, I know what this world can do to you, and I cannot bear to watch it happen again. I could understand Vénéranda’s fear. But understanding it did not make me any less troubled by what that fear might mean for her daughter.
And perhaps this is what makes motherhood such complicated terrain. We can recognize when another mother allows fear to dictate her actions. We can see the harm she may be causing while understanding exactly why she is doing it. But recognition becomes much more uncomfortable when we turn that same examination inward. How many times have we insisted we were protecting our children when we were actually trying to protect ourselves from the possibility of watching them suffer? How often have we expected our daughters to understand fears rooted in experiences they have never had? And how often have we confused the responsibility of preparing them for the world with the desire to prevent them from experiencing it on their own terms?
When Protection Becomes Inheritance
Our daughters are not reincarnations of our wounds. They are not born to complete the lives we could not live, correct the mistakes we made, or carry the burden of preventing our histories from repeating themselves. And yet, how often do we place those expectations upon them without ever realizing the weight we are adding?
We call it guidance. We call it discipline. We call it preparing them for the world. And certainly, there is wisdom in preparing our children for realities they have yet to encounter. But there is a difference between equipping someone to navigate the world and teaching them to fear every road we have traveled. That distinction matters. Especially when the world we survived is not necessarily the world they are entering.
Vénéranda’s struggle illuminates a contradiction that reaches far beyond her individual experience. She has learned to speak the language of reconciliation. She has committed herself to helping other women find their way toward forgiveness. But when confronted with her daughter’s humanity, she must discover whether she can extend that same commitment into the relationship where she may feel most vulnerable. And perhaps this is one of the most uncomfortable truths about healing. Understanding our trauma does not automatically prevent us from transferring it. We can name our wounds, study their origins, even dedicate our lives to helping others recover from similar experiences, and still find ourselves responding to the people we love through the very fears we believe we have overcome.
Because trauma does not always announce itself as trauma. Sometimes it arrives disguised as responsibility. Sometimes it sounds like wisdom. Sometimes it looks remarkably like love. And sometimes it is love, tangled so tightly with fear that we can no longer distinguish where one ends and the other begins.
But I do not want to examine Vénéranda’s contradictions without also examining the world that produced them. Because there is another question we must ask. Who placed these burdens upon our mothers, and why have they been left to carry them alone? Vénéranda did not simply become fearful. Her experiences were shaped by an extraordinary historical catastrophe, by violence that disrupted families, communities, and the very foundations of trust. The genocide against the Tutsi was not an abstract event in her life. It was a devastating rupture whose consequences continued long after the violence itself. To consider her response to her daughter without acknowledging that history would be to separate the woman from the world that shaped her. And that would be another kind of injustice.
We ask mothers to raise children who are courageous, compassionate, resilient, and free. Yet we rarely ask what it costs to raise those children while carrying histories of violence, displacement, oppression, loss, or survival. We celebrate the strength of women who have endured. But how often do we question the conditions that required such endurance in the first place? How often do we praise a mother’s resilience without considering that she may have deserved a life in which she did not have to be so resilient? And what becomes of that resilience when it is passed down as an expectation rather than offered as wisdom?
The Things That Travel With Us
In my exploration of The Migrating Psyche, I keep returning to the idea that movement is not limited to bodies crossing borders. Memory moves. Identity moves. Fear moves. And what one generation experiences can shape how another generation learns to inhabit the world.
Some inheritances arrive in the form of stories, traditions, language, and the comforting familiarity of belonging. Others are less visible. The things we learn without being taught. The silences we know better than to interrupt. The ways we brace ourselves for dangers that have not yet arrived. The expectations we accept long before we understand where they originated.
Vénéranda survived a historical catastrophe. Her daughter inherits a world shaped by that survival, even though her own experiences and choices are different. The mother’s past becomes part of the daughter’s present. But must it also determine her future?
I find myself returning to this question as I think about my own daughters. Four remarkable lives unfolding before me, each discovering her own rhythm, her own voice, her own way of moving through the world. I want to give them the wisdom of my experiences without making them prisoners of my fears. I want them to understand the world without being consumed by its dangers. I want them to know where they come from without believing that where they come from must determine how far they can go. And perhaps, more than anything, I want them to understand that they do not owe me a life that makes my sacrifices worthwhile. Their lives are already worthwhile. Their becoming belongs to them.
But I must be honest enough to acknowledge that knowing this does not mean I will always live it perfectly. Because I am still learning, too. And perhaps healing is not the absence of contradiction. Perhaps it is our willingness to recognize ourselves within it.
The Courage to Be Taught by Our Children
I wonder how often we overlook the possibility that our children are not simply recipients of our wisdom. They are also capable of expanding it. We spend so much of motherhood teaching. Teaching them to walk, to speak, to discern, to navigate the complexities of an unpredictable world. We teach them what we know. And sometimes, without realizing it, we teach them what we fear.
But what if our daughters are not only inheritors of our stories? What if they are also authors of something entirely new? What if their refusal to carry certain burdens is not a dismissal of our experiences, but evidence that something in our journey has made another way possible? Perhaps our mothers carried what they did so we could survive. Perhaps we carry what we do because we want our daughters to thrive. And perhaps our daughters will discover that thriving requires setting down some of what survival demanded.
That possibility is both beautiful and unsettling. Because it asks something extraordinary of us. Can we love our daughters enough to allow them to become women whose freedom challenges everything we were taught we needed to survive? Can we celebrate their courage even when it takes them beyond the boundaries of our own understanding? Can we recognize their independence without interpreting it as distance? Can we allow them to make decisions we would not make and still trust that the love, wisdom, and guidance we have offered remain part of who they are becoming?
These are not easy questions. And I do not pretend to have mastered their answers. But I am increasingly convinced that one of the most profound responsibilities of motherhood is learning to distinguish between what belongs to our children and what belongs to us. Our experiences may inform their journeys. But they should not imprison them. Our histories may help them understand the world. But they should not become the boundaries of their imaginations. And our love, however fierce, must leave room for their freedom.
What We Choose to Pass On
I return to Vénéranda. To the women gathered in her healing circle. To the painful, necessary work of reconciliation. And to the extraordinary distance that can exist between understanding forgiveness and practicing it within the relationships that matter most. I do not see Vénéranda as a mother who has failed. I see a woman whose journey toward healing remains unfinished. A woman who has discovered the possibility of reconciliation with a devastating past but must still confront the ways that past shapes her relationship with the future. And I recognize something deeply human in that struggle.
Because perhaps healing is not a destination we arrive at once and for all. Perhaps it is a practice we return to. Again and again. In our relationships. In our reactions. In the moments when fear rises before compassion. In the choices we make when the people we love begin becoming someone we did not anticipate.
Perhaps the most profound act of love is not teaching our daughters how to carry everything we have survived. Perhaps it is recognizing when they have discovered a way to live without carrying it at all. And perhaps, if we are willing to listen, our daughters might teach us something about freedom that our own mothers never had the opportunity to imagine. I think of the generations of mothers who have carried histories too heavy for any one human being to bear. And I think of my own daughters.
I cannot promise them a world without suffering. But I can promise to examine the difference between the dangers they must learn to navigate and the fears I have yet to put down. Because I am still learning, too. Still discovering what belongs to me, what was handed to me, and what I have unknowingly placed in their hands.
And maybe that is the beautiful, uncomfortable work of motherhood. Learning when to hold on, learning when to let go, and sometimes allowing the very children we have spent our lives teaching to show us another way. After all, what good is teaching our daughters to fly if we cannot bear to watch them leave the ground?
Perhaps the greatest gift we can offer the next generation is not a life without burdens. That would be impossible. But rather the wisdom to recognize which burdens belong to them, which belong to us, and which have been carried for so many generations that no one remembers why we are still holding them. Motherhood asks us to carry so much. But it must also teach us when to put something down. Because our daughters deserve more than the inheritance of our survival. They deserve the freedom to imagine a life beyond what we have survived.
And maybe that is where healing truly begins. Not simply when we learn to forgive the past, but when we stop asking the future to carry it.
What have we mistaken for protection that may actually be an inheritance of fear? And what might become possible if we finally gave ourselves—and our daughters—permission to set it down?
Leave a Reply