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Lauryn Hill’s daughter Selah Marley recalls ‘trauma’ of being beaten as a child
12 August 2020, 15:15
The 20-year-old daughter of Lauryn Hill and Rohan Marley opened up about her mother's discipline style.
Lauryn Hill and Rohan Marley's daughter Selah Marley spoke frankly about her childhood trauma during a two-hour Instagram Live this week.
The 20-year-old opened up about growing up with a famous mother and revealed how the having an absent father affected her and her siblings as children.
"Honestly guys, I’m just hurting. I can’t even front that I’m not," she said. "I’ve been hurting for so much of my life and so much of my life has been me avoiding how much I’m really hurting just from the circumstances."
While she asserted that her mother was an "amazing woman", Selah says she used to get "very angry" and recalled the "trauma" she now faces as a result of her mother's discipline style.
"She would spank us to no avail. She was just very angry. So, so, so, so, so, so angry. She was literally not easy to talk to and then half the time we didn’t live with her. I lived with my grandparents half the time.
"It’s crazy, I’m playing this trauma back in my head as I speak to you," she added, before recalling her mother beating her and her siblings with a belt.
"You walk to go get the belt, the switch, this that. And my mother is an amazing woman, but she obviously didn’t do everything right," she said, adding that she was still "traumatised" by the sound of the belt hitting.
"And then the threats, the constant threats… That belt, man. That’s that slave s**t. ‘That was some slavery s**t. All Black parents were on that s**t."
Selah said her mother was angry because of the way the media treated her, and was "going through her own s**t’ and raising five kids with a man ‘who didn’t really know her’."
At one point, Selah admitted she used to google what it was like to have a dad because her own father Rohan - son of Bob Marley - wasn't around.
"I came to the conclusion of how much of my life I’ve f***ed up and how much of me is f***ed up simply because my dad just wasn’t around," she said. "And there’s just a void where there should be a person. And it’s honestly really hard."
"This is commonplace for many people & I’m glad so many of you were about to resonate with the healing that I speak of. But please do not go bashing my parents right now - especially my father."
She added, "I never said I did not love him. I said that their shortcomings created trauma that I now need to consciously and actively heal from."
