Child brides – The missing piece (in development)

Brides aged 12, 14, 15. Like my mother, my friends, the women of the island. I follow them to our otherworldly island of Karpathos and to my birthplace in the US to tell their story for the first time and discover daughters and granddaughters the journey of intergenerational trauma.

Growing up I realized that I carry a transgenerational trauma of my small-married female ancestors. But she’s not the only one raised by a child, a mother who married at 14.

In Karpathos, my place of origin, the tradition of marrying underage girls of 12 and 15 years old to adult men has deep roots. I escaped my grandmother’s intention to marry me off at 14; the same did not happen to my cousins and friends, who were taken from our teenage toys to be turned into brides overnight.

Although there is a strong matriarchal tradition in the place, none of these women have so far accepted to speak publicly about this wound that was opened by their violent passage from childhood to motherhood and made them lose a part of themselves forever.