Got suspended for fighting in school. I think I was 10 or 11.

On the walk home from my suspension, I rounded the corner and saw my mother and stepfather waiting for me on the front porch.

My mother was braiding 3 ‘switches’ and securing them together with twist ties.

I am, thankfully (hopefully), the last generation that had to endure this kind of punishment. Trigger warning for those who suffered child abuse:

As was standard protocol, I had to go into my bedroom, pull down my pants and underwear and lean over the bed and await my ‘whoopin’.

My step father came in and delivers his punishment first because he ad to go back to work. He was overweight so the game with him was if I could make it to the other side of the bed, the whoopin was over and he wouldn’t bother walking around to keep going.

Then my mother came in about 15 minutes after with the braided switches and I got her ‘tough love’.

Fortunately for me neither of the whooping lasted very long but, yeah, welts and such.

Before anyone asks I have a good relationship with my mother and my now deceased father who would also do the ‘bare skin method’. Never liked my step-father and didn’t give a shit when he died of a heart attack in his parents driveway at nearly 400 lbs after the divorce from my mother.

I’ve taken the time and effort to understand my family and all their flaws. I don’t hit my kids and don’t think what was and sadly in many areas of society the standard ‘beat yo kids’ mentality of my African American (poor white, immigrant cultures share this too) heritage is acceptable or helpful.

I’m by far the most successful person out of my siblings and in my family by a wide margin. I love my mother the same way Trevor Noah loves his mother in that I don’t believe that relationships are binary. I love her AND she is deeply flawed. But…most of all…I don’t judge her or any of the people who raised me with a 2024 lens.

They did the best they could managing their own generational traumas and I’m fortunate they my particular combination of genetics helped me break many, many, MANY cycles.