What We Were Missing
This is Part V of a series titled “In the Shadow of Silence: A Family, A History, A Reckoning”. Each piece explores the intergenerational trauma, emotional roles, and hidden legacies within a large African family shaped by silence, survival, and unspoken grief.
This piece marks a reflective turn in the series — a shift from individual stories to the deeper psychological architecture beneath them. Here, I explore three core needs we all carry — autonomy, meaning, and connection — and how their absence quietly shaped the emotional landscape of my family. Writing this has helped me name what was missing, not to assign blame, but to illuminate the gap between survival and true emotional presence.
There’s a theory in psychology that says we have three core psychological needs: autonomy, meaning, and connection. When these needs are met, we grow. We thrive. We form a sense of self that is stable, resilient, and capable of love.
When they’re not met — when those needs are denied, distorted, or only conditionally permitted — we don’t just grow up with emotional wounds.
We grow up confused about what we even need.
We become adults whose compass spins. Who feel guilty for wanting space, who feel lost in intimacy, who chase achievement but never feel worthy.
I’ve come to see these needs — autonomy, meaning, and connection — as the three things my family of origin struggled most to provide. Not because they didn’t care. But because the system we were raised in simply didn’t know how.
Autonomy: The Need for Self
In our family, autonomy was dangerous.
You could have thoughts, but not express them freely. You could ask questions, but not too many. You could want something different — but the moment you said it out loud, it became a threat.
We were raised in a large family shaped by hierarchy, duty, and unspoken roles. Control was exercised quietly, sometimes through silence, sometimes through shame. “Who do you think you are?” wasn’t just a rhetorical question — it was a warning.
You weren’t taught to honour the self as something sacred. You were taught to manage it. To fold it down into shapes that could coexist with the machinery of the household.
Some of us adapted by obeying.
Others by charming, deflecting, disappearing.
I adapted by defying. For a while. Until I couldn’t anymore.
Looking back, I see how deeply we all longed to be ourselves — without penalty. But selfhood wasn’t safe. It wasn’t something nurtured. It was something you had to earn by not disturbing the fragile balance.
Meaning: The Need for Coherence and Purpose
There wasn’t a lot of room for meaning in the emotional sense. The meaning of life was externally defined: do well in school, succeed, serve the family, honour God, maintain respectability.
But what if you felt lost?
What if you didn’t fit?
What if your inner world didn’t match the script?
That wasn’t a conversation. It wasn’t even a category.
In my mother’s life, I saw what it meant to live without space for your own purpose. Married off at 15. Denied education. Brilliant, social, driven — but trapped in a role she didn’t choose. Her bitterness wasn’t just anger. It was a response to a life with no room for meaning as she defined it.
My father, on the other hand, placed meaning in education and discipline. Maybe because he’d clawed his way through colonial schooling to become a clinical officer. But I don’t think he ever got to feel his way into a purpose. He lived as though survival was enough.
And that shaped us.
We didn’t grow up asking “What matters to me?”
We grew up asking “What will keep the peace?”
Or worse — “What will keep me from being punished?”
Connection: The Need to Belong and Be Seen
This was perhaps the most complex and confusing of all. Because we were a large family, always surrounded by people — but that didn’t mean there was true connection.
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Connection was conditional.
- You were welcomed when you played your role.
- You were dismissed, mocked, or frozen out when you stepped outside of it.
We didn’t talk about emotions in any meaningful way.
We didn’t sit with sadness or fear.
We either swallowed it or spiritualised it.
Or turned it into silence, anger, or sarcasm.
Some siblings performed closeness, but kept their true feelings buried.
Some built personas — devout, charming, diplomatic.
But underneath all that?
I think we were lonely.
Each in our own way.
I was often visible when I acted out, and invisible when I was just… myself. That taught me that connection came through disruption — not presence. And that twisted something deep inside.
And So… What Were We?
We were a family held together by roles, not relationships.
By performance, not presence.
By management, not mutuality.
We were clever, resilient, disciplined, and deeply fractured.
Some of us broke.
Some vanished into religion.
Some tried to control everyone around them.
Some never landed anywhere at all.
We all became something the family needed —
and not necessarily who we were meant to be.
The Aftermath: What It Did to Me
I struggle with intimacy. Not because I don’t want it — but because I’ve learned that closeness comes at the cost of self.
I struggle to trust love when it arrives softly — because in my world, love often came after punishment, as the part of the cycle meant to draw you back in.
I fight to believe my dreams are valid on their own terms — without needing to serve someone else’s vision.
And I’m still learning how to be free without guilt.
But Here’s What I Know Now
Autonomy, meaning, and connection aren’t luxury items.
They’re not things you get when you’ve earned enough peace or proven your worth.
They are birthrights.
And if you didn’t receive them as a child —
You are allowed to reclaim them as an adult.
Even if it makes others uncomfortable.
Even if it means stepping away from old roles.
Even if you’re the only one in your family who ever tries.
That reclamation is not betrayal.
It’s healing.
It’s how the story begins to change.
Next in the series → Why We Were Ripe for Narcissistic Abuse
After identifying the core needs that were never truly met in our family — autonomy, meaning, and connection — Part VI traces the emotional consequences of that deprivation. It looks outward, exploring how the psychological blueprint formed in childhood shaped our adult relationships, and why certain dynamics, especially narcissistic ones, felt so familiar.
