''My Parents' Marriage'' by Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond, a Replica of Spiritual Implications of Generational Patterns

By Ayomipo Akorede

Familial or generational cycles are real, very real, and breaking them is hard work. While they are nothing to those who are not spiritually intelligent, they actually are a lot. They begin subtly with one or two people and gradually become the norm to feel like fate, but they aren't. They’re more like unwritten laws that override your essence, enforced by unseen forces or scripts passed down through the bloodline. And then you try to make edits that reflect who you are and what you value, you may die trying, or just end up being what you're not.

So Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond presents a story that reflects the reality of many through a familial marital pattern. You'll agree with me that in many African societies, marriage is more than a union between two people. It is the merging of lineages, histories, and, in some cases, spiritual destinies. Even if you think otherwise, it is what it is. Families often carry with them legacies—some celebrated, others quietly endured—that influence the lives of future generations. These legacies can be cultural traditions, behavioural patterns, or even spiritual burdens like academic limitations, poverty, etc. In this book, ''My Parents’ Marriage'', we see Nana's protagonist, Kokui Nuga, a 23-year-old woman, navigate a marriage that, on the surface, is nothing like her parents', yet beneath it lies the unmistakable imprint of her family’s history. Through this, we see a compelling X-ray of how generational patterns operate, and their spiritual implications..

From childhood, Kokui’s understanding of marriage is shaped by her father, Mawuli, and her mother, Micheline. Mawuli is magnetic and prosperous, a man whose life is threaded with multiple marriages, children spread across homes, and the kind of charm that wins public admiration but leaves emotional gaps in private. Micheline, his fourth wife, chooses to remain in the marriage despite the physical and emotional distance, viewing it as a pragmatic way to secure financial stability and access to her children in a society where men often control resources. Kokui grows up absorbing not only the visible dynamics—infidelity, silence, compromise—but also the invisible spiritual weight of a family structure that has normalised emotional distance as a survival strategy.

These happenings lead to her resolve to build a marriage that looks nothing like her parents'. While this decision is good, it is wrapped in fear rather than self-awareness. Soon, she meets a young man, Boris, whom she feels is dependable, faithful and free from the chaotic web of multiple unions. In fact, he is everything her father isn't. They move to the United States after their marriage, a symbol of her purposed departure from her past. In a school of thought, physical relocation is often imagined as a way of “changing the story” by starting afresh. Annoyingly, Kokui soon learns that generational patterns are not bound by geography. The behaviours, fears, and coping mechanisms inherited from her family cross oceans with her, quietly influencing her responses to marital challenges. Real village people influence you, might say. Lol. Let's face it: choices or unresolved issues of one generation can affect those who come after. These patterns, though not limited to superstitions, may be reinforced by spiritual ties, ancestral covenants, or the weight of unaddressed grievances passed down in silence.

Kokui’s marriage to Boris reveals how subtle these inheritances can be. While their relationship is not marred by the public scandals or betrayals of her parents’ union, the emotional distance that develops between them echoes the very silences she witnessed growing up. Boris’s steadiness, which once seemed like a blessing, sometimes feels to Kokui like rigidity (a trait many girls who love drama hate. Such men are labelled ''predictable''). She finds herself withdrawing during conflicts, keeping her grievances unspoken, mirroring her mother’s quiet endurance. In African spiritual thought, such repetitions are often seen as signs of “ancestral scripts”— unwritten patterns that descendants enact without fully understanding why. Along the line, her father dies, and she comes back to Ghana. This is where the confrontation she has long avoided begins, signalling spiritual reckoning. She steps into the spaces where her earliest ideas of love and marriage were formed and meets Micheline, her sister Nami, and Auntie Hemmaa, the people who each carry their own truths about the family’s past. Listening to these different perspectives forces her to see her parents not as fixed archetypes but as human beings shaped by their own generational inheritances and the societal systems in which they lived.

One of the most profound shifts for Kokui is her understanding of her mother’s choice to remain in the marriage. What once appeared to her as passivity now looks more like strategy, a deliberate calculation to ensure her children’s stability in a patriarchal setting. In African contexts, such strategies are often underpinned by an awareness of the spiritual and communal consequences of certain actions. Divorce, for example, is not just a personal decision; it can alter family alliances, disrupt traditional responsibilities, and, in some beliefs, invite spiritual repercussions. It is after this confrontation that Kokui’s real breakthrough comes. She decides that silence will not be her legacy, and secrecy around personal struggles perceived as a form of protection (of the family's dignity, children's innocence, cultural reputation, etc.) will not be her style either. Hence, she takes a deliberate step to break the cycle, refusing to pass on the same “unspoken covenant” of emotional suppression that shaped her life. First, she accepts that marriage is not meant to be a perfect inversion of her parents’ union, that building a healthy marriage is less about erasing the past and more about consciously steering the relationship with intention. This perspective aligns with an African spiritual view that life is a balance between the inherited and the self-determined—what is given to you by your lineage, and what you choose to make of it.

The novel ultimately affirms that breaking generational patterns requires more than good intentions. It demands confrontation with history, spiritual forces, family narratives, and oneself. No one wins without fighting. If it started with one person, then it can end with one person. Such confrontation is also a form of healing, not just for the individual but for the lineage. By addressing the patterns that have shaped her and making different choices, Kokui participates in what many traditions would see as cleansing or releasing her bloodline from certain inherited burdens. It is exactly what many do today in the place of prayer. 

Her story resonates because it reflects a truth familiar to many of us who are struggling with one familial issue or another: you cannot outrun your inheritance, but you can transform it. Whether those patterns are carried in family stories, in the quiet rules of relationships, or in the unseen spiritual bonds between generations, they require both awareness and courage to change. Kokui’s journey from fear to intention offers a map for anyone seeking to step out of the shadow of their lineage without losing connection to its strengths. And perhaps that is the most profound spiritual implication of all—that in facing our generational patterns, we are not just rewriting our own lives, we are editing the script for those yet to come. It is more than personal growth; it is an act of service and a gift to posterity.