A short YouTube monologue by Anwar White urging listeners—especially African and Caribbean women—to examine their childhoods and parental relationships to understand present-day bonding patterns and reactions. The speaker recommends asking "What did I need from my parents that I did not receive?", revisiting formative ages (8, 12, 16), and distinguishing honoring one’s experience from ‘‘criticizing’’ parents; the aim is to center oneself and improve current relationships and parenting.
Chapters
Easy said. I bet you are a great dad. I'm learning to get better and better each day. I will tell you that the work that I do really does bring a certain level of awareness about how important my words and my actions are, especially to my daughters. It is a very challenging thing to.
Hold space and create space for my daughters to speak their truth, but to do it in a respectful way. And Lord knows I am challenged every single day.
My mother tells me that.
My karma is coming back to me tenfold because of the mouth that I had and have. Yeah. So.
I try my best. No parent is perfect. So I wanted to share with you.
One of the really great questions that you can ask yourself is, what did I need from my parents that I. That I did not receive?
And if you're one of those women that says, no, my parents were great. I didn't have. I don't need anything. I didn't need anything more. You a lie.
It means that. And the reason why I say this is because.
Your bonding patterns are created.
By your parental relationships.
And so a lot of us don't want to be completely honest about what our true experience was of our parents.
And I just want to.
Give a special shout out to those African and Caribbean ladies out there.
Who have often been taught that you can't say anything that is not positive about your parents.
But that's the work. You gotta get so real with your childhood.
To help you understand why you do the things that you do, say the things that you say, live the way that you live, react the way that you do, all of that.
Okay? So if you haven't done any of that.
Honey, go back to when you were 8. Go back to 8, go back to 12, go back to 16.
Then let's talk.
Gotta get real on that.
Exactly.
The question is not about talking shit about your parents. It's about honoring your experience of them.
And if you can't do that, then it's going to be hard for you to honor your experience of your current relationships as well.
Yeah.
So.
That'S it, girl. That's what it looks like.
That's the work.
That's what we talk about in my programs. Because you got to know where you're coming from. Yeah.
People are talking about, you know, it's okay to criticize them. This isn't about them. You've lived a lot of your life centering them in the same way that you center, man. This exercise is not about them. This is about your experience, your experience of them.
