A speaker defines trauma for Black women as anything that prevents authentic breathing, tracing the "Strong Black Woman" syndrome to slavery and Jim Crow laws. She explores how mothers pass unhealed trauma to daughters, the racial dynamics between Black and white women, and her own journey toward recognizing what she's transmitted. Healing requires conscious work and self-reflection.
Chapters
You guys say trauma. Trauma comes so many different ways, right? And, um, before I even jump into all that, I would love for you to, from your experience, um, in, in this field, how do you identify trauma? I would say trauma is anything that makes you feel like you can't breathe. So I think about, I think about being a woman, right? And so one of the things we have as Black women in particular is this: it doesn't matter what happens, I'm gonna get it done. It doesn't matter what's going on in my life, I'm gonna make it happen. And so now clinically there was a Black woman syndrome because we, we hold our breath in our new normal to function in survival mode. And survival mode has become our new normal, so we don't even know we're in survival mode. But in survival mode, you're not being authentically who you are. That's true. And so whatever causes you not to breathe and be authentically who you are is trauma. And it doesn't matter what society tells you trauma is. Now, trauma is a loss, trauma is grief, trauma can happen to your body, it's an injury. What they don't always talk about is that soul injury. They don't talk about the internal, that inner emotion that brokenness that comes when somebody says something. Like, think about when you were a little girl, right? So here's, here's what we're not taught as little girls. We're not taught that we were created to make the not good good. Now, where do I get that from? Genesis. God spent 6 days creating everything, said everything was good. This one time in the Bible said it was not good, as that was when the man was alone. He said it's not good for man to be alone. And so God put that man to sleep and created, fashioned, crafted designed a woman to fill that spot. Now, when you're with a man because he's lonely, he'll walk all over you. Yeah. And you become his doormat. But when you're with a man because it's not good for him to be alone, you know that you add value to his life. So if you learn that you're created to make the not good good as a little girl, you will never allow a man to treat you anything less than who you are because you were created to make his life better. Now you have a lot of women who, because of mass incarceration, because of slavery— you know, if you read the Willie Lynch Letter, you'll see how they specifically targeted the Black woman in slavery because they understood that if they get to her, she'll get to the rest of the family. So now she will raise her daughter not to rely on a man. She'll raise her son to be physically strong but mentally weak so master don't get them. And so generation after generation after generation, we've raised our daughters to give and to give and to give, but to be emotionally disconnected. We've been acculturated to be emotionally disconnected from our children, from our life, and from our men. Why? Because master took them. So how can you authentically love your children knowing that master might take them? How can you authentically love your man if you know master might take them? Now, even after we were quote-unquote set free by emancipation, it's instinctive in us, right, to make it work. So how do I make it work? How do I still have joy? I raised my daughter to be just like me, emotionally disconnected. With no real joy, no real joy, because you can't have real joy and be traumatized, because at some point it's a lie. That's true, right? So now you got— so then you come through, then you got the Jim Crow laws, right? So you're not good enough now, right? So look, even though— so my Master of Sacred Theology was based on womanist theology, the whole issue between white women and Black women It was intentional that white women would hate Black women because master saw us and was like, mm-hmm, look at all that, I need me some of that. Now how can I have me some of that without my wife saying to me, don't get none of that? So now you demonize Black women and say we're oversexualized. She walked past me with that booty, she walked past me with that voluptuous booty, she walked past me with them eyes, honey. You can't trust her because every time she come in here, she's slinking around. So I want you to notice the difference between the sisterhood when it's just us. It's very different than when white women are in the room because their loyalty is to whiteness, not sisterhood, right? So then you have that dichotomy of, we're sisters, but I gotta keep you at arm's length. So now you have to do what they call code switching, right? So when you with the sisters You can say what you need to say. You know, my husband getting on my nerves. You know, my kids is ungrateful. But as soon as that's over, you gotta get your mind right because you gotta get back in the race. You understand? So that ability to balance what society is telling you and then what you're really feeling. So trauma comes in any area of that. If your mother was emotionally disconnected because she's trying to figure it out, so now you like, my mama don't love me, but but it wasn't that she didn't love you. She can't give you what she didn't get. That's right. That's right. Right? And a lot of times as young women, we don't understand that in the fight, right? We in the fight, but we don't understand that mama only gave me what she could have, right? What she had. It's not until you have your own daughter that you like, oh my goodness. I don't know how many times I picked up the phone, I was like, I am so sorry. Sorry. I look at my daughter, I'm like, I am so sorry. Right? Because now as a mother, I understand that my, my intentional movement towards my daughter gave her an unintentional trauma. And it's not until you become self-reflective that you realize that, that all of us are going through this mode of trauma. And trauma, we sort of rest in the trauma now because now we like, that's just part of life. No, people say, that's my lot in life. It's not. It's not. And it's not until we come to the understanding that we've been lied to. Yeah, you know, Brown says, you tried to manipulate me and I can't be manipulated. So if you haven't seen the play, I Can Do Bad All By Myself, go watch it. It's so good.
