Ancestors…You lied: Rage, Inherited Grief and carrying a Torch I Never Chose.

Can I be real?...

Without fear of judgment. Do I have your permission to name the “wrong” emotion? Can I do this without fearing my honesty makes me docile, neutralized, or somehow radically castrated from an activist perspective. 

This Torch is heavier than you told us and……..

I'm angry.

I resent the unfinished revolutionary work I was born into.

Our ancestors fought long and hard. They resisted. They organized. They mobilized. They held onto civility and dignity in the face of people who denied them both. They died poor, dehumanized, barely memorialized, and too often crucified by history.

I don't negate or minimize what they accomplished. The rights, opportunities, and privileges my generation inherited exist because they refused to surrender. Their sacrifices created doors that would have otherwise remained locked.

But the revolutions they began and the torch they passed forward feels heavy.

it's two true things at once: their fight was necessary and honorable, and the weight of it is unbearable. Our life’s work at OSE refuses the binary of "grateful" vs. "angry." while discussing this inherited grief.  

I know liberation isn't a finish line. I know justice has always been a process rather than a destination. But damn...the minor concessions granted under the monster of all the isms—racism, classism, sexism, and every other system designed to maintain inequality—don't feel like freedom. 

I didn't ask for this fire.

A fire fueled by grief and doused in doubt.

So what do we do when we begin to resent the revolution we were born into?

No one asks Black children if they want to keep fighting.

The expectation is inherited without consent.

The debt collectors in this never-ending socio-political and cultural war won't come for us alone. They'll come for our grandchildren too. I fear they won't be equipped for the mourning that comes with realizing they'll inherit the heaviest torch of all: a revolution they didn't start and will never get to finish.

Just like our grandparents did.

Just like our parents did.

Just like we are now.

In therapy, we often use reframing to help clients find meaning in situations that could otherwise consume them. Not to deny pain, but to keep pain from becoming the only story.

This feels no different.

At OSE, we spend a lot of time asking young people to imagine communities that work better for them.

Where is your school's growth edge?

How could systems better serve your family?

What barriers do we need to break together?

How do we do that?

The answers usually lead to more questions. But eventually, they arrive at the same place.

Young people wondering how they were born into this mess in the first place.

That's where validation becomes essential.

We walk them through the shared truth that many of us facilitators were once those same confused, angry young people. We were never asked whether we wanted to inherit this fight either.

Over weeks of group process, something begins to shift.

The reframing happens naturally.

Our youth begin mourning the identities they could have had. They grieve the ways they might have thrived if they didn't have to spend so much of themselves breaking barriers that should have never existed.

They recognize the weight of unfinished liberation work they never agreed to carry.

And then something remarkable happens.

That grief-fueled rage becomes more than emotion. It becomes a catalyst.

Not just for themselves.

For their mothers.

For their siblings.

For their communities.

Weeks of curriculum. Weeks of unlearning. Weeks of building. Weeks of imagining futures that don't yet exist. Weeks of strengthening critical thinking and political consciousness.

Sometimes we arrive at profound insight.

Sometimes we arrive at the witty honesty only Gen Z can deliver.

"This unfinished work isn't a gift."

They're right.

It isn't.

The reframing doesn't automatically create activists. That's never the goal.

What it often creates is something just as powerful.

A young person who moves from sitting quietly, wondering why...to standing firmly and demanding what needs to happen for justice to exist—for themselves, their family, and their community.

And once again, we facilitators, the adults in the room, arrive at another bittersweet common ground with the youth we serve.

None of us asked for this fire.

But we can choose what we do with it.

We can let grief consume us.

Or we can let it fuel us.

We mourn our ancestors—and we should.

But I challenge us to mourn for ourselves, too.

Because mourning isn't only for the dead.

Mourning is also for the living.

It's for the people carrying unfinished dreams, inherited burdens, and revolutions that refuse to end.

Maybe it's the grief of it all that keeps the fire alive.

And maybe that fire, however unfairly inherited, will be enough to light our paths forward.