Reimagining your own colonial trauma

In thinking of my own relationship to colonization and my own colonial history. I realize that I am a by-product of the many colonial influences and control Somalia has had. I am somewhat you call, a colonial subject, even if I am not still living within colonial walls. I am still being colonized even if I don’t seem like I am. As a colonized individual, colonial trauma still lives within me even if I feel like it isn’t. 

From the moment I was young, my sense of safety was gone which left me afraid every day. I experienced so much migration trauma as a little black girl migrating from Uganda because I never knew what “home” looked like for me. Coming here I felt scared every day because I never felt safe enough to be myself or to live freely. I remember the days going into my first-grade class, with every eye on me, my teacher calling me that little, “refugee girl”. Growing up I would hear the N-word thrown around me every day. Even if I didn’t know what it meant, I was afraid. I grew up with no identity, with no sense of self. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know where I came from or who my people were. 

I grew up poor so I believed that my salvation to gaining any economic mobility was getting a college degree. My parents never went to college. So I was the first in my family to have received an education from a Western institution. I went to school to be able to learn, gain the skills I needed, and essentially play their “game” so I could be better off financially and economically. I ended up finding my “safety” within a colonial institution by believing that I will be so much better off with a colonial education when I wasn’t. But all that did was leave me with more questions. 

I have been put into boxes my whole life. I always felt like my story was being told for me. I was told you are this, you are that for as long as I can remember without any recollection of any knowledge as to who I was for myself. Without giving me the opportunity to learn more about my own history. Even in college, when I went to go seek those answers for myself, it just left me more confused

I didn’t know it then. But that was a form of colonization. I was being colonized since I was young. My sense of self was stolen by my colonizer putting me into boxes I never wanted to be in. My history was stolen when I never felt like I had access to the knowledge of my community, of my history, and my people, and I had to go to the confines of colonial walls of a western institution in order to have that access. Then they gave me a new story, a new imagination but all it was is a colonial imagination. By keeping me within the lowest amount of social consciousness all my life, erasing the truth behind my history, I was left with this idea that I was nothing. That I am nothing without my colonizer. So I had to play the same game as them. I had to believe the same thing as them without understanding they are the reason that I am in this situation that I am in because they created it. They end up giving me colonial answers to a problem they created. With the understanding that my very existence was because of some white man’s imagination of who I am and I NEVER had that opportunity to shape my identity for myself.

All of this means, 

Somalia is a colonized country. 

Colonialization means dehumanization. Somalis are seen as savages, terrorists, and violent people because of the western depictions of Somalis. It was seen like that for hundreds of years. Using our effort to resist colonial forces against us and comparing us to animals is dehumanizing. They took away our humanity which left us vulnerable to more colonialization which resulted in the colonializing of the mind. By subjecting and dehumanizing us, it left us unable to have a strong sense of worth and belonging in our own land. They went into our land, stole all of our resources, colonized our minds by making us feel less than, and this resulted in very much colonized people unable to fend for themselves and restore their own land without feeling like they need help of the colonizer.  

The colonizing of our minds means the trauma we experience feeling like we are less than our colonizer, of feeling so desperate that we seek the validation of our oppressor. That trauma breathes within us. It is a trauma resulting from the colonizer continuing on beating our psyche until we break and we give in. For so many colonized individuals, this is the reality. 

As a result of my growing up with no sense of self, I made sure to take every opportunity that I had to learn more about my own history because I could never learn it from them. I read books, listened to podcasts, to music, consumed art, and etc of my motherland, of Somalia created by Somali folks who told the story of Somalia through a very much anti-colonial lens. I felt restored. But I also felt angered because I realized that everything that I learned, everything that I was fed was a lie from the moment I was a child. 

My sense of self was tied to my feeling of security as a child. When I lost that, I lost my security. It took me years to finally safe and free to be who I am. When I always felt limited by the confines of colonial walls, of the boxes that I never wanted to be in the first place. 

I realized there was so much that I had to unpack for myself. Everything that I am, the way I thought, my confidence, the way I see myself, and the way I show up in the world were all a direct result of the colonial trauma that lives within me, within my lineage. When I started to consume all things Somalia, learning more and more about my own relationship to my motherland and in everything in between, I started to see a dramatic way in how I viewed myself. I could feel my sense of self coming back. I could feel that security I craved as a child. I never did things as a way to perform for the white man. I did everything because I wanted to, all because I finally felt free to be who I am unapologetically. 

One of the most important things as a colonized woman is learning to be confident in who I am, in everything that I embody, and in learning and unpacking so much of what I was fed as a child. At the end of the day, the essence of de-colonialization is taking back the story that was taken from you and finally telling that story for yourself. By breaking from the boxes that have suffocated you and becoming into the person you have always wanted to be. Now that is liberation because, in some way, we are all mentally enslaved but learning to free yourself from the shackles of colonization of the mind is hard. However, it is doable. I did it and I am still in the process of it. It is a lifelong journey to heal my own colonial trauma, of breaking my own generational curses. For every colonized individual, all it takes is a dive into learning the reality of your own relationship with colonialization and that everything that you are and have become is a deliberate attempt to erase your existence from this world. That everything you are is curated by colonial walls and beliefs. All it takes is one look to make you question your whole existence. However, it is worth it because you’ll finally know the truth. The reality and at the end of the day, it is worth it knowing who you are and everything you embody. You owe it to yourself and your ancestors.

Always & forever

salaams