Channeling Matriarchal Power Through Stories
Intergenerational trauma is real but we are breaking the cycle.
“Your grandpa left your grandma at this mall once.”
“Left? What do you mean left?” I asked my mom, confused.
“As in they came to the mall together, but he didn’t want to stick around waiting for your grandma. So he just left.”
“Did he tell her? How did grandma get back?” This time, I was a little more upset than confused. I know my grandma doesn’t drive.
“No. Your grandma looked around and couldn’t find your grandpa anywhere so she concluded that he had left her alone. She took the bus. When she got home, he was just there reading his papers.”
“What did she say?”
“What could she say?”
I have heard many stories about my grandma and her mannerisms. The slow way she walks, eats, and shops. Maybe that’s why my grandpa left her behind. But I also remember how quick and bold she is with her words. Perhaps that’s why I expected her to say something.
But there was nothing she could have said which wouldn’t have disturbed the peace she desperately needed at home after a long day. To not make her home a battlefield . . . again.
When he was younger, my grandpa was very impatient and short-tempered. My mom always told me how from the moment she opened her eyes in the morning until she closed them at night, there was always something that annoyed that man. She grew tired of getting scolded or hearing his wrath especially when it was directed at her mother.
My grandma was a very patient woman but, sometimes, she would talk back to my grandpa which resulted in a fight.
“Mom, why do you talk back? You like to make that man angrier,” my mom would tell my grandma.
“I’m frustrated!” she’d justify.
“But if you don’t say anything, it would stop.”
When the story became this upsetting, I don’t know how exactly I reacted. I probably just froze. In the same way, I would freeze at any sight of conflict between my parents.
I remember once, I was getting ready for work and I heard loud voices from my parents’ bedroom door. Not sure if they were being playful or fighting, I listened closely. Then I heard stomping and the bedroom door swung open.
“Honey, honey, don’t . . .” I heard my dad’s voice in a tone I had never heard before.
“Don’t call me that if you are going to call another bitch that!” my mom cried.
The whole time, all I could think of was my little brother who was so young at the time. He must have been confused as to why his parents were arguing. I just wanted to call for him, pull him towards me, and tell him that everything would be okay.
That’s when I realized I had been frozen there for a solid 10 minutes or so.
And then all I could do was cower and cry.
I called my sisters and told them to come back home that weekend while I had to work. “This looked serious, but I think it’ll be over.”
However, when they got home, they called me and said “Look, if it wasn’t you who told us what had happened, we wouldn’t have believed it because they seem fine.”
And this was not new to us; we expected it in a way. Our parents would fight once in a blue moon and when they did, they always pretended like it never happened. In a way, we can say that our childhood wasn’t as bad as my mom’s and that we are lucky in a way.
Perhaps the word “lucky” here is the most ironic use of that word.
My mom would say that my grandma is lucky that my grandpa never ever laid hands on my grandma. He would shout, scream and say hurtful things but never once was he physically violent toward her. He never hit her.
But is my grandma lucky that she died at the age of 51 because her heart failed her? Sure, my grandpa never left obvious bruises, but that amount of stress and emotional turmoil would have done a number on someone’s mental health which could result in bad physical health as well. My mom is now almost 53, a little older than when her mother left her. She is now on blood pressure medications and recently her doctor gave her a few Xanax.
Like my grandma, my mom doesn’t have anyone to share her problems with, especially since her mother passed away. She has reservations about venting to her friends and she doesn’t have any sisters. That also meant she sometimes treats us, her daughters, like her sisters.
This unhealthy dynamic meant that she would emotionally dump on us, especially when it was about our father. “I don’t get enough help in this house and I am tired. Everything in this house is on MY shoulders. It’s on ME, ME, ME!”
When my sisters and I heard this or when we talked among ourselves, we couldn’t help thinking “Well, did you ask him or were you just being passive-aggressive?”
We now have enough awareness to realize that patriarchy is the reason why it is easier for us to tell our mothers that they should change instead of telling our fathers that they should do better. And we struggle with this even though — believe it or not — we come from a custom that is considered “matriarchal” in Malaysia.
Our custom means that properties such as land and money are inherited through daughters and not sons. Our lineage and which of the 13 clans we belong to depends on our moms and not dads. Other Malay men outside our custom have said to me that they were told not to look for a woman from my custom because we are strong-headed.
I am not at all offended. If my independence makes me strong-headed, so be it. I look around and see the women in my community and I don’t think we are strong-headed. If anything, we are strong-willed.
A strong-willed woman has the endurance to stay with an emotionally abusive man or a man that probably cheated on her. For as long as I can remember, stories my mom or great-aunts passed down to us centered a lot around strong-willed women.
This was how they channeled their matriarchal power — through stories. It’s their way of telling us, “We have suffered. Learn from us and do not make the same mistakes!”
This birthed a new generation of women that won’t settle for anything less, especially from men that we allow into our lives. In a society where almost everyone my age I know is married and has kids, my mother’s words were louder than the constant buzz of social pressure.
“It’s better to wait long than marry wrong.”
Writer’s notes:
I say “matriarchal” when it is more matrilineal because the rest of the Malay communities in Malaysia is so patriarchal that the mere idea of women being able to stand on their own feet seems intimidating, it challenges the status quo. You can read more about Adat Perpatih here.
I performed this story at Storytelling Lisboa on International Women’s Day in 2023.
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