Aug. 30, 2024
The Power of Knowing Our Roots
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How does understanding your family's past shape the resilience of future generations? In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Daniel Mamah, a distinguished psychiatrist and author, to uncover the incredible story behind his book "As the Rivers Merge." Dr. Mamah takes us on a heartfelt journey as he meticulously pieces together his parents' lives through letters, documents, and his own reflections.
This conversation is a poignant reminder of the strength that comes from knowing and preserving our family stories.
By sharing his motivations for documenting his family's history, Dr. Mamah highlights the importance of capturing our own stories, not just for posterity but as a source of inspiration and resilience for future generations.
Listen in for a thought-provoking discussion on the generational impact of resilience and how our lives today can shape the well-being and understanding of those who come after us.
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Bettina
Chapters
00:09 - Resilience and Family Legacy
08:16 - Cultural Backgrounds and Family Legacy
14:04 - Generational Impact and Resilience
Transcript
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Welcome to the Friday edition of In the Rising a health and wellness podcast.
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On Fridays, I cover interviews or short updates on all aspects of health emotional, psychological, physical and sometimes even spiritual.
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Emotional, psychological, physical and sometimes even spiritual Resilience is an extraordinary word that effortlessly rolls off our tongues, but it truly embodies the indomitable human spirit and its ability to triumph over adversity.
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In my interview today with Dr Daniel Mama, a very renowned and accomplished psychiatrist and author, we delve into resilience displayed by his incredible family, which became the inspiration behind his book entitled as the Rivers Merge.
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Dr Mama, who possesses a very rich heritage bridging two nations, cultures and races, proudly shares the extraordinary achievements of his family and the profound life lessons that he have imparted on him.
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I want to just thank you first of all for your time.
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Good morning.
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Good morning and thank you for inviting me.
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Absolutely.
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You have a list of accomplishments you know physician and father Congratulations.
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That's a big one.
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What prompted you to, on top of that, find the time to write this book?
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That's a big deal.
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Well, I will tell you that I didn't know it was going to take this long to write.
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I first had the idea of writing a book 12 years ago, and the reason was my wife was pregnant with my first child, and, since my parents are no longer with us, I wanted my child to know more about their grandparents than they would if there was no book, and so writing a book almost felt like a way to sort of compensate for not having my children's grandparents in their lives my children, the grandparents in their lives, yeah, and with that too, as I've spoken to people who really emphasize legacy journaling, trying to incorporate the stories, you don't just want to leave a house and a car, you want to leave a history.
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How much deep dive did you have to do into your family?
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I had to do a lot, and you know, the more research I did, the more I realized how much I don't know.
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I was fortunate, however, to have access to a lot of letters that my mother wrote.
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She was, she used to write a lot, so we had and the good thing is, I had aunts and grandparents who used to still keep everything.
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They never threw anything away and so once they found out that I was writing a book, they basically brought hundreds of letters that they had stored over the past several decades, some from the 1950s, when my mom was still a little girl, and so that was a fortunate thing, because it allowed me to really kind of dive into not just what happened but how my mom felt, what her challenges were, what her struggles were.
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And similarly, my dad had a lot of documents that he left.
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My dad would.
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He didn't write as many personal letters, but he kept a lot of his official documents, so his work-related documents.
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He had these folders lined up in his bookshelves all the time, and so, going through that, I was able to really put together their life in a very intricate way.
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Then, of course, I did lots of interviews and things like that and historical diving into the history of the time to pull everything together.
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But that really allowed me to get a good picture of things.
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Do you feel that it gave your current life a little more purpose or a little more oomph I don't know how else to phrase that because you knew what your parents went through and were able to navigate alone and together and were able to navigate alone and together.
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Yeah, I mean, you know, when you learn about some of the struggles that people had back in the day, it definitely puts your life into perspective and you start to ask yourself do I really have problems?
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You know, it's my life, you know, and so it allows you, at least for some time, to really think about your life and say well, you know, maybe things aren't that bad.
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And if my parents could, you know, could persevere through, you know, world war and revolutions and civil wars and coups and poverty where they didn't have enough to eat, then surely there is a possibility that I can get through some of my own struggles.
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And so, from that standpoint, it was quite an inspiration.
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And the word resilience comes up right and there's a lot of question, investigation.
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Is some resilience genetic and is there something like family trauma?
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We talk about all of that that's come about, but no matter what, just hearing anyone's story brings about some resilience.
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How do you feel that you have been able to change as a father, to instill resilience in your children from hearing about your own parents?
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Well, I think that resilience is something that we all have.
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Sometimes we need to encourage ourselves or encourage other people to be resilient, but I think everybody is capable of being resilient and there are definitely life experiences that make you sort of give up on your ability to move on.
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You sort of give up on your ability to move on.
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That's real.
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But I really believe that we all have the potential to persevere through difficult situations and that's what I try to instill into my kids is you know, you can get through things.
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Even though things look like they may be impossible to solve or they look like the worst things ever.
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You can get through it.
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You have gotten through it before.
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Other people have gone through difficult situations and I think that sort of mindset I think can be helpful.
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Yeah, and you shared as I was reading about your mom.
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It was very interesting to hear about how, how she viewed like her childhood compared to your dad.
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Like there were still, like she spoke up about what one of her uncles did or grand great-grandfather did or did not do, and that there just was like this resilience from the beginning.
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Very interesting story.
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How do you view your mom?
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How did your view change of your mom now compared to as you were growing up?
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change of your mom now compared to as you were growing up.
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Well, I didn't know.
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I mean, I sort of knew a little bit about her background, but I didn't know things as granularly about exactly how she struggled, what, why she cried, how much she cried, what her daily struggles were like.
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Because, you know, as parents, we don't always tell our kids everything about our struggles.
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We often try to buffer them, we try to put a great face on things and smile when we're struggling so that they don't suffer with us.
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So while I knew that there were struggles in her life in terms of, you know, living through communism and the revolution and things like that, researching this book really allowed me to understand what that struggle really means and how it really affected her and how strong she was to be able to come from that background and still be such a positive, loving person.
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I think that is a big key to come from that background and still be such a positive, loving person.
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I think that is a big key to come from that background and still be positive and loving.
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A lot of people will use that background as an excuse to be mean, be negative, like I didn't have a victim mentality versus I can be a victor, maybe not the way I imagined it, but I can overcome through this, and so you're.
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You also described.
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You know your parents followed love there.
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They have, here you are, but there were struggles just in that, in that love itself.
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Did you feel that you experienced a lot of that growing up or did they let in like the kind of the situations that they were navigating?
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well, I mean, you know, my parents came from different cultural backgrounds.
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My dad was nigerian, my mom was hungarian, so that culture clash had challenges?
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Um, of course there was.
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There are people who didn't quite accept the relationship, or they questioned the relationship in the 70s when it was going on.
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So there were struggles there.
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But as their child, I never really understood that.
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I mean, they never came to me and said, oh, we had lots of struggles.
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They might have mentioned a line or two here and there, but you know that was never the running theme.
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So, for example, my grandfather was really opposed to the relationship, right.
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But I didn't know my grandfather to be negative in any way.
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In fact, I love my grandfather.
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My grandfather loved us and you know he gave us so much grandfather.
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My grandfather loved us and you know he gave us so much, um, and he also loved my father, right.
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So after my parents got married, the relationship between my grandfather and my dad became super positive, um, and so it never dawned on me how challenging the situation must have been back then, because I never, I never really experienced that yeah, you know, as you're writing this book, you have different cultures, because that's that's a big one, um.
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Different spiritual backgrounds catholic, protestant, um.
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And then you yourself, how have you navigated because it's an interesting phase to navigate two cultures and feel that's normal to you and that's not necessarily normal to everyone else.
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How do you feel that that has, when you're interacting with other people, how do you feel that what you can bring to the table just because of the cultural background of your parents?
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I mean, I really, I really view it as a positive thing.
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I think that the more cultures that you're familiar with, I think the more you understand the world, the more you can relate to people, right, and so I've always found that to be a really special part of my life is that, you know, I have this Hungarian side and I can relate to Hungarians.
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I speak Hungarian.
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You know, if I see a Hungarian in the United States or whatever, I automatically can bond really easily with that person because of the mutual background.
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But then I can flip around and do the same thing with a Nigerian, right, because I also have that experience.
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And you know, I also lived in in England, in Manchester, for a couple of years and, and you know that also brought some life experiences, um, that I thought were really special, and so so that's kind of how I view things is like, the more cultures that you have that you're familiar with, um, and it doesn't necessarily have to be because I was born into it, it's, you know.
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Even you know there are people who were born in one country but they they've lived in many different countries and they have a similar experience.
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There's something very special about knowing about different cultures.
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Oh, I think you're on mute.
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I did, I did, I did.
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Okay, unmute, there we go, so the other I'll have to look into this.
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The other part is that I wanted to talk about is with your parents passing away before your child, before your children were born.
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What is one thing that you would like to bring to them that say, you know, with this book, what would you like them?
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There are organic feelings, but what would you like them to feel and know about you and your background?
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Well, I, I mean, the main thing I wanted them to know is who their grandparents were right.
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Just to know who they were right, because I didn't want my grandparents to just be a picture on the wall to them.
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They kind of look like that.
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I remember that I wanted them to know what their personalities were like, like little nuances.
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My dad loved to laugh and smile and he was very ambitious, right.
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These are things that you can't really just talk to somebody about, right, that you have to experience that.
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And the same thing with my mom.
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My mom was selfless, she was loving, she was very religious, right, and you know they had other personality traits.
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I wanted to bring that to my children so that they know who these people were, that they know the story.
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So that's sort of the main thing.
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But, of course, as I'm writing the book and realizing how much they've been through and how much resilience they had, I also want my children to know about that, to know that your grandparents were great people.
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They had really.
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They have a beautiful story and they were strong and they kept going, even in the face of difficulties.
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All right.
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One question Are you going to write your own story for your children?
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You know, I think there's always a possibility of that.
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If it's going to take 12 years, I probably won't, and if it's going to take 12 years, I probably won't.
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But you know, we don't really know what the future brings.
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It will be nice at some point to maybe talk a little bit about my life or maybe come up with some other story that people will be interested in.
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What I like to talk about in every interview at the end is the one golden nugget that I came away with, and during our conversation I felt the word resilience came up again, with his own comment of I don't think I have any problems.
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Maybe, just maybe all the things that we're going through have their place, but it could be our children or our grandchildren or some great, great great grandchild that realizes all the things that you went through, all the choices that you went through, have helped them become a better person, have helped them understand their own health journey, their own emotional journey, and so I felt the impact that we all have is highlighted in this conversation.
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It definitely made my eyebrows go up and increase my self-awareness.
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With that, I thank you again for your time and, if you're so honored, if you would share this podcast to the people you feel whose hands and ears would benefit from this message or any message on In the Rising podcast.
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I also would welcome a five-star review, because it does so much to broaden the audience and our forever-ending algorithm changes.
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Thank you again and until next time, let's keep building one another up.
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