I Want You to Be Well

This book explores the meaning of childhood trauma, also known as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), and its long-term impacts on health and well-being in adulthood. It also highlights its prevalence: if you did not experience it, chances are that you know someone who did.

In these pages, the author lays out a journey toward understanding how we can heal from ACEs—as individuals and collectively as a community. The book shares the impact of what happened to us and traces the path to recovery and restoration.

Especially in the African context, many of us are not aware that we have been through trauma or adverse childhood experiences. As a society, we seem to have normalised some of these things, and we also don’t realise that what happens to us in childhood shapesour adolescence and adulthood in profound ways.

This book also explores how we can break the intergenerational cycle of ACEs. Children who experience dysfunction, abuse, or neglect in the home often grow up to repeat those patterns—or to find themselves in relationships that mirror what they experienced. The cycle continues across generations, showing up as pain, disease, unstable relationships, and what some in religious communities call generational curses.