Digital Culture Podcast 1 Kyle Perrodin

Kyle Peridon interviews Kamal Ali, a LAM College student, about his experiences with child neglect and abuse. Kamal grew up in a split household filled with abuse. He faced physical, verbal, and mental abuse. Despite this, he became resilient and focused on school to escape his home environment. He advises others in similar situations to separate themselves from the toxic environment and seek help. Kamal's education was both negatively and positively affected by his experiences. He believes that addressing generational trauma and providing more access to mental health support can help those going through similar situations. Kyle and Kamal hope to raise awareness and encourage people to help those experiencing abuse at home. Hello everyone, I am Kyle Peridon. I am a freshman at LAM College and today I will be interviewing a fellow LAM student, Kamal Ali, about his experiences with child neglect and abuse. So Kamal, tell me a little bit about your childhood. I grew up in a split household. It was just filled with abuse all around. My mom and my dad would always fight. My mom would fight with her mom. And eventually when she basically cut everybody off, all of my family, she just projected that anger and violence onto me. I grew up just like, you know, I got kicked out several times. I grew up being beaten and just like verbally abused, mentally abused, all of that. That's pretty much it. How do you think you've grown from that experience? I would definitely say it made me a stronger person. I'm pretty resilient to negativity and violence because of what I grew up in and my surroundings and environment as a child. Also, it just made me more diligent, I would say. I really wanted to get out of the house because of that, so I just focused on school and going to college. Do you have any recommendations for people who might be going through something like this? Not really, I'm not going to lie, but I would say definitely just try to separate yourself from that environment. I mentioned earlier that I got kicked out a lot of times, but at the same time I also looked for other places to stay. I knew it wasn't healthy to just put up with it, and then I also really wanted to go to college, not only to further my education and pursue my passion, but also to, like I said, separate myself from that environment and get out of my home. Do you think your experience with education and school was affected because of your experiences, like at home? Yeah, in both a negative and positive way. I would say it was kind of hard to focus at school sometimes when I was coming from home or anticipating something bad happening when I got home. But at the same time, it also helped me a lot because it made me realize that my education was that much more important because I saw it as a way to basically escape and get away from those toxic relationships. Now, do you think something should be done to help people who are going through this? I think a big contributor is generational trauma. My mom was also abused by her mother, and her mother was also abused by her mom. So it's like a generational thing. I think especially in specific communities, if we were to put more focus on not projecting the negativity or violence that you endured as a child onto your children, that's a really big step. And also, I would probably just say like, if I was given the only help that I had was really just like, you know, my close friends, but I wish I was given the opportunity by, you know, maybe I didn't look hard enough, but I wish I was given the opportunity by like the school, my school that I was currently attending to, or just the programs that I was a part of, to, you know, just get that mental help or, you know, aid or assistance with, you know, whatever was going on at the time. Probably more access to more help. Well, yeah, me and Kamau just wanted to shed a light on what a lot of, you know, kids in school might be going through. You know, a lot of people, they don't know about their experiences back at home, so I think we should all, you know, keep a mindset of that and do something to help those people that are going through that. And yeah, thank you for listening.