It is now November! On the last Thursday of this month, we have Thanksgiving Day here in the U.S.; it’s a time where many gather, whether family or friends, and surround each other with love. This is usually done through food/drinks, laughs, and activity. In this collection of posts, we will focus on a key value each week for families with hopes of this energy being spread into our communities .
The value for this week is…
RESPONSIBILITY
Our society is hurting more and more each day. It’s time for us all to reassess what’s important, give thanks, and move forward first as a family unit and then as a community. It is the job of a family to rear each other into great beings and pass this information down to the next generation and beyond. From birth, a child learns from their parents and other adults present in their lives; strong bonds are created and these children go into adulthood with these skills. If taught and applied in an appropriate way that suites the brain, these values help in managing the stressors of daily life.
In families, it is our responsibility to…
- Hold each other accountable for actions as it relates to the role or responsibility within the unit
- Teach morals related to right and wrong
- Address personal traumas and seek professional help without projecting these behaviors to children or any other member
- Educate each other on the factual history of the past, whether good and bad, to encourage positive change in the future.
- Teach the importance of hard work even when there are challenges.
- Depict healthy, loving relationships even with brief moments of disagreements
In the case of Black families, there is so much trauma in our history and many of the values our ancestors brought from Africa during slavery, were slowly broken by a system that wanted to destroy them. Once some freedoms were returned after the official end to being enslaved, these values returned as well, but there were intermittent cycles of beings who again wanted to destroy them. This is an example of something that affects so many groups of people and the time is now to address them and make room for change.
There was once a time where all families accepted their responsibilities and brought that to the way they interacted with others. There was a time when neighbors spoke to each other. There was once a time where children could play outside without their parents’ constant supervision because the community was on watch. There was once a time where if you engaged in negative behaviors outside the home, you were afraid because you knew everyone would tell your parents and you knew it’s consequences. Now is the time to get back to these values by looking through the peepholes into our homes and making sure we are teaching responsibilities that will eventually carry over into our communities.