Speaker 1: Each of us, if we live long enough, is going
Speaker 1: to experience trauma. Trauma is a Greek word that means
Speaker 1: injury to the body, mind or spirit. Parents, grandparents die,
Speaker 1: we may have major disappointments at work, we may get divorced,
Speaker 1: partners may die. So that's traumatic. I think we have
Speaker 1: to recover that understanding that trauma is a part of life.
Speaker 1: Collective trauma is what we're all experiencing right now. So
Speaker 1: you know, a mod arbor. In February, Brianna Taylor, in March,
Speaker 1: George Floyd in the Midsummer. We're getting reminders again that
Speaker 1: even in the midst of a pandemic, the pandemic of
Speaker 1: American racism is still steadily beating forward. It's not an
Speaker 1: individualized thing. This is a systemic thing. It's not an
Speaker 1: individualized experience of trauma. This is rooted in our countries.
Speaker 1: His three. Hi everyone, I'm Katie Kuric, and this is
Speaker 1: next question. It has been a brutal year, not only
Speaker 1: for the loss, heartache and isolation this pandemic has brought,
Speaker 1: but also because of everything else. It is the nightmare
Speaker 1: that America, I'm an especially African Americans country are living
Speaker 1: and experiencing over and over. She dialoged it in the
Speaker 1: comfort of her own home and over again. A mob,
Speaker 1: supporting and encouraged by President Trump, storm the US capital.
Speaker 1: We will never give up. We will never concede. It
Speaker 1: doesn't happen. You don't concede. Whether who would have ever
Speaker 1: believed we would see anything like this now to a
Speaker 1: disturbing rise and attacks on Asian Americans from California to
Speaker 1: New York. Six of his eight alleged victims were Asian women,
Speaker 1: viciously attacked in broad day lights. Tensions are already high
Speaker 1: in the city where the trial of former police officer
Speaker 1: Derek Showing. Even as the trial was going on, protests
Speaker 1: are raging once again in Minneapolis over the killing of
Speaker 1: another unarmed black man. Don't right, remembers the jury. I
Speaker 1: understand you have a verdict. It's a trauma. We the
Speaker 1: jury in the above entitled manner as to count one
Speaker 1: unintentional second degree murder while committing a felony, buying the
Speaker 1: defendant guilty, a brave young woman, a smartphone camera, a
Speaker 1: crowd that was traumatized, as to count two third degree murder,
Speaker 1: perpetrating and eminently dangerous act, find the defendant guilty. We
Speaker 1: saw how traumatic and exhausting just watching the trial was
Speaker 1: for so many people. Count three second degree manslaughter culpable
Speaker 1: negligence creating an unreasonable risk buying the defendant guilty of
Speaker 1: that verdict agree too. On top of the fear so
Speaker 1: many people of color live with every day when they
Speaker 1: go to sleep at night and pray for the safety
Speaker 1: of themselves and their loved ones. It's been painful, and
Speaker 1: even though we're starting to inch out of the shadow
Speaker 1: cast by this pandemic, depending on what you've experienced or
Speaker 1: witnessed this past year, the light that greets you may
Speaker 1: not be much comfort. So for now, in today's podcast,
Speaker 1: we want to acknowledge the trauma, the individual traumas, and
Speaker 1: the uniquely shared trauma of this past year, and how
Speaker 1: we can begin to heal. I think healing looks like
Speaker 1: honoring black culture and tradition, honoring our bodies. We have
Speaker 1: to see this as a public health emergency. When you're
Speaker 1: so used to being told that you are in the margins,
Speaker 1: and that you're supposed to be grateful for that slot
Speaker 1: in the margins, it's it's really liberating to learn that
Speaker 1: that is false and that you are capable of creating
Speaker 1: and living your own truth. Today, we'll hear from three
Speaker 1: healing practitioners, a psychiatrist, a parenting advocate, and a sewing
Speaker 1: group leader, each of them devoted to transforming trauma in
Speaker 1: their own way, and with their help will understand what
Speaker 1: share trauma means, how it's experienced, and how we can
Speaker 1: move forward. We'll start with the psychiatrist. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: psychiatry is all about trauma. Dr James Gordon is the
Speaker 1: founder and executive director of the nonprofit Center for Mind
Speaker 1: Body Medicine in Washington, d C. The origins of modern
Speaker 1: psychiatry with Freud and Broyer and Jane at the end
Speaker 1: of the nineteenth century, and what they understood is the
Speaker 1: power of psychological trauma, particularly early in life, to affect
Speaker 1: us later in life and to produce all the anguish
Speaker 1: and the symptoms of psychiatrist Saul. Dr Gordon is known
Speaker 1: for dealing specifically with popular latianwide psychological trauma from the
Speaker 1: effects of war, school shootings, or natural disasters, and he's
Speaker 1: using his new book, Transforming Trauma, The Path to Hope
Speaker 1: and Healing to pass on his decade's worth of knowledge
Speaker 1: to give people a step by step guide book to
Speaker 1: coming into balance and then using your imagination and reaching
Speaker 1: out to other people. Now. I met Dr Gordon, or
Speaker 1: Jim as I know him, in after Haiti's devastating earthquake.
Speaker 1: I was traveling down to Port of Prince frequently to
Speaker 1: report on the aftermath and recovery, and Jim was there
Speaker 1: with his center to work with Hades children, many of
Speaker 1: whom had been orphaned and their homes destroyed. Jim says
Speaker 1: that earthquake is a good example of a massive event
Speaker 1: that brings about not only individual trauma, but trauma that
Speaker 1: the community has to grapple with together. That's collective trauma.
Speaker 1: And we could see as we talked with those kids
Speaker 1: whom we were meeting at the hospital, each of those
Speaker 1: kids also had an individual problem physical injury, loss of
Speaker 1: a family member, but the whole society was effective and
Speaker 1: that's what we're seeing here. First and foremost I want
Speaker 1: to say before we dive into this pandemic which has
Speaker 1: resulted in so much collective trauma. Jim is, I'm so
Speaker 1: sorry about your brother who died at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the pandemic. Do you mind sharing what happened with us
Speaker 1: now what happened? I may start crying so because I'm
Speaker 1: missing so much. What what is might owner brother younger
Speaker 1: by thirteen years, and he had some kind of respiratory
Speaker 1: problem sinus infection. Is living in Dallas, Texas. He was
Speaker 1: doing okay, and the doctor said he was doing okay.
Speaker 1: He just declined. Nobody pushed him to go see a doctor.
Speaker 1: Everybody was staying home at that point, and so he
Speaker 1: just died. He died alone at home, and it was
Speaker 1: tragic for for me and for my other brother and
Speaker 1: for a lot of people who loved him. And we
Speaker 1: never were positive it was COVID, but but it certainly
Speaker 1: looked like it was COVID nineteen. Were never able to
Speaker 1: get a test. And I think that in addition to
Speaker 1: it being almost certainly COVID nineteen, the fact that nobody
Speaker 1: checked up on it was a product of the pandemic
Speaker 1: as well, so that nobody would go Nobody went over
Speaker 1: to to see how he was doing, even when he
Speaker 1: didn't respond that he was very responsive person. And then,
Speaker 1: of course after he died, we weren't really able to
Speaker 1: gather together two mourn so my other brother took care
Speaker 1: of the business that had to be taken care of.
Speaker 1: What's important, aside from the personal loss and maybe helpful
Speaker 1: to other people, is that I gave Eve myself time
Speaker 1: to mourn. So every day for months after he died,
Speaker 1: I cried, and I set aside time since I got
Speaker 1: up every morning and I could feel the weight in
Speaker 1: my chest, and I allowed myself to take some time
Speaker 1: to cry and sometimes yell and scream you know, why
Speaker 1: did this have to happen? Why? You know? And I
Speaker 1: miss him so much, and I gave myself time to mourn.
Speaker 1: So even though I couldn't do it in person with
Speaker 1: other people, I was able to go through that experience.
Speaker 1: And that's crucial, I think. And this is one of
Speaker 1: the things that people are deprived of during this pandemic,
Speaker 1: is that talk to Morton. This is just one of
Speaker 1: a myriad of ways I think, Jim, that the pandemic
Speaker 1: has affected us individually and collectively. Some people have lost
Speaker 1: their loved ones. Some people have lost their jobs. Some people,
Speaker 1: quite frankly, have lost both. Some have lost the experience
Speaker 1: of working outside the home and feel restricted in their environments.
Speaker 1: Some people have the loss of their children. Getting a
Speaker 1: kind of more traditional conventional education, UM it seems there
Speaker 1: have been such varying degrees of loss, and yet collectively
Speaker 1: it's had a huge impact on all of us. Can
Speaker 1: you can you talk about that? Well? I think there
Speaker 1: is a sense of uncertainty among all of us, and
Speaker 1: the ones who manifest it, particularly that I've observed are
Speaker 1: young people who are coming out of college or going
Speaker 1: into college, But there is a feeling of what's going
Speaker 1: to happen, what's the world going to be like? Is
Speaker 1: there a place for me? Plus they're being deprived of
Speaker 1: what we have in our society, that the rights of passage,
Speaker 1: that we ordinarily have, the rights of graduation, of problems
Speaker 1: of being together away from home, them away from family
Speaker 1: at college or university, or or in fact at work.
Speaker 1: So there is a sense of being thrown off. And
Speaker 1: I think those young people have an eighteen year old
Speaker 1: son and I can see and feel it in him
Speaker 1: very much, and they are kind of the canaries in
Speaker 1: this coal mine of collective trauma right now. The the
Speaker 1: other group that's experiencing it are the most obvious, perhaps
Speaker 1: our healthcare providers, frontline healthcare providers. So not only are
Speaker 1: they being traumatized by the threats the physical threats to
Speaker 1: their health and well being. They're also overwhelmed by what
Speaker 1: they have to deal with, by that the quantity of death,
Speaker 1: and by their inability to do very much about it.
Speaker 1: That's what I hear again and again from them. We
Speaker 1: you know, we we feel so, you know, we were
Speaker 1: trained to help people, and there's so little we can
Speaker 1: do in this circumstan. And also anybody who is a
Speaker 1: member of a minority, anybody who is operating on a
Speaker 1: marginal uh you know income, they're all traumatized because you know,
Speaker 1: there's been a whole lot of hostility against people who
Speaker 1: are black or brown Native people and they're dying at
Speaker 1: much higher right, So it brings rates, I'm sorry, So
Speaker 1: it brings up that previous trauma as well. So it's
Speaker 1: it's seeping through the whole society. And when those of
Speaker 1: us who are more fortunate perhaps and are able to
Speaker 1: do work from home, we're feeling it too, because it's
Speaker 1: like the the lion is just outside the gates. There's
Speaker 1: there's an anxiety about going out and when can I
Speaker 1: do and what can I do? So I would say
Speaker 1: there's a general uncertainty, and of course the political situation
Speaker 1: has compounded that uncertainty, what's going to happen and what
Speaker 1: is it going to look like in the future, and
Speaker 1: people just understandably, we simply don't know what happens with
Speaker 1: communal trauma when everyone is affected, how does it impact
Speaker 1: the community, because it seems to me there are all
Speaker 1: kinds of of psychological issues that are bubbling very close
Speaker 1: to the surface, if not exploding through. Well. I think
Speaker 1: the first thing is to understand that trauma affects us
Speaker 1: on a biological level, and the two basic responses that
Speaker 1: we have two loss of someone, to threats from outside,
Speaker 1: to worries about the economy, to lack of control. By
Speaker 1: the way, lack of control is, it's a threat and
Speaker 1: it's a and we react. We humans react to these
Speaker 1: sort of psychological, social, as well as physical threats as
Speaker 1: if it were a threat to our life, and we
Speaker 1: go into fight or flight response, just as if a
Speaker 1: lion were actually chasing us. It may be, you know,
Speaker 1: we're scared about what's going to happen with our work,
Speaker 1: or we're worried about COVID nineteen, and we become Our
Speaker 1: heart races, our blood pressure goes up, our muscles get tense.
Speaker 1: The part of our brain responsible for fear and anger
Speaker 1: fires off more parts of our brain responsible for thoughtful
Speaker 1: decision making and self awareness, and compassion shuts down. It's
Speaker 1: harder to connect with other people. And then if you
Speaker 1: play that out in the social realm, if you're more
Speaker 1: anxious and irritable, you're gonna deal with people in a
Speaker 1: more anxious and irritable way. It's going to be harder
Speaker 1: to connect with them. Plus, you're in a state, if
Speaker 1: you're in a fight or flight state where your biology
Speaker 1: is saying, you know, your life is at stake, it's
Speaker 1: not so easy to connect with other people. So the
Speaker 1: individual response to trauma, that individual fighter light response also
Speaker 1: manifests in social and collective ways. Well, if that part
Speaker 1: of your brain that helps you understand and have compassion
Speaker 1: isn't working so well, it tends to contribute to the
Speaker 1: polarization that we see in our society, the fear of
Speaker 1: the other. And I think, I think, you know, people
Speaker 1: have ways of looking at the world that they've held
Speaker 1: long before this pandemic. But I think with the trauma
Speaker 1: of the pandemic and of uh, you know, very visible,
Speaker 1: palpable political division that's exacerbating the situation that's that's throwing that,
Speaker 1: that's lighting the fire. The gasoline was there, but this
Speaker 1: is the match that's made people so both so fearful
Speaker 1: and so angry, and made it even more difficult to
Speaker 1: connect with and have compassion for the other. So I
Speaker 1: think the trauma has precipitated a lot of the difficulties
Speaker 1: that we see socially and lyrically, and certainly for people
Speaker 1: of color, it's made them far more fearful. It's also
Speaker 1: made them more likely to be targets of, you know,
Speaker 1: whether it's a white supremacists or of anxious police. We
Speaker 1: work a lot with police at the center from Mind
Speaker 1: body Medicine. They're very much on edge there on the
Speaker 1: front lines, and that doesn't improve their judgment, doesn't improve
Speaker 1: their capacity to deal with really challenging situations with the
Speaker 1: calm and understanding that that's needed. What about generational trauma?
Speaker 1: You know, we hear about you know, trauma being passed
Speaker 1: down and I'm curious, is there a physiological aspect to
Speaker 1: this or is it, uh, you know, just shared collective memory.
Speaker 1: What have you learned about that? It's it's both. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if you are a black person in the
Speaker 1: United States, you're dealing if what's been passed down through
Speaker 1: the family, but what people who are telling you about
Speaker 1: what happened to ancestor slavery and what happened during reconstruction
Speaker 1: and what happened more recently during Jim Crow era, and
Speaker 1: then you're experiencing it in your life now because there
Speaker 1: is still systemic racism in our society. So that's and
Speaker 1: then every incident exacerbates that pain and that trauma. In addition,
Speaker 1: there is this biological passing down of trauma, and the
Speaker 1: way it seems to go is that when we are traumatized,
Speaker 1: often there are changes in structures in our chromosomes that
Speaker 1: in turn affect the genes. So this is not like
Speaker 1: what we learned about in eighth grade science, where X
Speaker 1: rays you create physical damage to the genes. These are
Speaker 1: changes in molecules that are on the chromosomes, in the chromosomes,
Speaker 1: and they're called epigenetic changes. EPI means above and Greek,
Speaker 1: and these changes in these molecules, one of them is
Speaker 1: the methyl molecule one carbon three hydrogen atoms. When those
Speaker 1: changes occur, it affects the way the genes act in
Speaker 1: the body. So let's say we've experienced a major trauma,
Speaker 1: that may those epigenetic changes affect genes that help us
Speaker 1: to deal with stress. So if I've been traumatized before,
Speaker 1: I may have more difficulty dealing with stress because of
Speaker 1: these changes in my chromosomes. Now that's in this lifetime.
Speaker 1: When women are pregnant and have been traumatized, those changes
Speaker 1: are transmitted to the child in utero, and those children
Speaker 1: have these epigenetic changes not always but often. And also,
Speaker 1: and this is positively biblical, the changes can be transmitted
Speaker 1: through three generations. We have seen this. This research that
Speaker 1: was done in New York, very striking research by Rachel
Speaker 1: Yehuda Non Sinai Medical School on the children and grandchildren
Speaker 1: of Holocaust survivors. And even these children and grandchildren, many
Speaker 1: of them at the same epigenetic changes in their chromosomes
Speaker 1: which made them more vulnerable to stress. And what was
Speaker 1: so striking about the research is that you could see
Speaker 1: the same changes even in children and grandchildren who grew
Speaker 1: up apart from the Holocaust. So it wasn't social interpersonal influence.
Speaker 1: This is a biological change that happens. How can you
Speaker 1: begin to heal from trauma? How can you be in
Speaker 1: a better balance, and what are the tools that everyone
Speaker 1: can can take advantage of. The first understanding is that
Speaker 1: trauma does affect us, and then it's going to come
Speaker 1: sooner or later to all of us. Doesn't mean you're crazy,
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you're abnormal. That you need to pay attention
Speaker 1: to the way the trauma has affected you, whether it's
Speaker 1: present trauma or past trauma. The second piece that's really
Speaker 1: important is to understand that it is possible to change,
Speaker 1: to move through and beyond the trauma. And that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that I tell stories in the book
Speaker 1: of people who have done that, who have gone from
Speaker 1: being horribly traumatized, whether it's by wars or by terrible
Speaker 1: physical and sexual abuse when they were children, who have
Speaker 1: grown up to be remarkable adults, or who have as
Speaker 1: adults changed profoundly, and then giving people very practical tools
Speaker 1: I teach people. And you're breathing slowly and deeply right now.
Speaker 1: I know because I know what you're gonna say, and
Speaker 1: I but I want to do it and I need
Speaker 1: to do it. We are talking about meditation or mindfulness exercises.
Speaker 1: What I teach is so simple, it's so easy. Just
Speaker 1: breathe slowly and deeply, in through the nose and out
Speaker 1: through the mouth, with your belly soft and relaxed. That
Speaker 1: is the antidote to the fight or flight response. That's
Speaker 1: what begins to bring our brains fully back online. We
Speaker 1: decrease activity in that o magdala in the center of
Speaker 1: fear and anger. We increase activity in our frontal cortex
Speaker 1: in the areas of thoughtful decision making and self awareness
Speaker 1: and compassion, and simply relaxing with our breath makes it
Speaker 1: easier to connect with each other. So that's one technique.
Speaker 1: Second one that's really important is movement, moving the body excers.
Speaker 1: I know you know this. The the enormous value of
Speaker 1: moving our bodies and decreasing our level of stress and
Speaker 1: in proving our mood. Exercise is is good a treatment
Speaker 1: for anxiety and depression as anything we have available on
Speaker 1: the plat. And then we teach them expressive meditations because
Speaker 1: one of the things that terrible things that happens with
Speaker 1: trauma is in addition to going into fight or flight,
Speaker 1: which continues sometimes if the trauma is overwhelming and inescapable,
Speaker 1: as it has been for many people during this period
Speaker 1: of pandemic is they just shut down. They freeze because
Speaker 1: there's nothing to do. So at that point we shut
Speaker 1: down physically and I'm sort of punching over a little here.
Speaker 1: We shut down emotionally. We gnumb ourselves to the pain.
Speaker 1: And expressive meditations shaking and dancing, fast, deep breathing, laugh
Speaker 1: and jumping up and down, shouting, crying, those helped to
Speaker 1: break up the freeze response, so we come back into balance.
Speaker 1: And the more balance, the more we're in a state
Speaker 1: of Balt's, the easier it is to use all the
Speaker 1: self care techniques, The easier it is to use guided
Speaker 1: mental imagery to help us solve problems and I think
Speaker 1: through issues that are confounding. The easier it is you
Speaker 1: to express ourselves in words or drawings, or the more
Speaker 1: we can get out of doing something simple like watching
Speaker 1: a TV show or reading a book or reading a newspaper.
Speaker 1: We're relaxed, We're getting more out of it, We're moving
Speaker 1: back into a more balanced vote normal life. Coming up
Speaker 1: the share trauma of parenting through racism that's right after this.
Speaker 1: There's a telling similarity in the deaths of George Floyd
Speaker 1: last May and Dante write this past April It's a
Speaker 1: detail that may not have gone unnoticed by parents, particularly
Speaker 1: those raising black children, that in the final moments of
Speaker 1: their lives, Dante Wright called his mom and George Floyd
Speaker 1: yelled out for his Raising black children in the United
Speaker 1: States can be really scary. Trina Green Brown is an
Speaker 1: activist and mother of two in Los Angeles. My son
Speaker 1: reminded me a lot of Trey von Martin in Tamir Rice,
Speaker 1: and so when those cases came to the forefront and
Speaker 1: we began proclaiming black lives matter, I began parenting from
Speaker 1: a place of fear. So the experiences of Tamir Rice
Speaker 1: planning a park and being gunned down in less than
Speaker 1: a minute by law officer impacted the way that I
Speaker 1: was parenting my little black boy, that he could no
Speaker 1: longer go out to a park without me being present.
Speaker 1: The impact of Trey Von Martin being murdered while wearing
Speaker 1: a hoodie made me take all hoodies out of my house.
Speaker 1: And so I really lies after a while that I
Speaker 1: was beginning to parent from a place of fear, fear
Speaker 1: that my child could be the next Mirror Rights or
Speaker 1: the next trade By Martin. But my fear was not
Speaker 1: only my fear was pushing me to be the police
Speaker 1: in my own house, like there was no police, but
Speaker 1: I started to police. I was allowing white supremacy to
Speaker 1: show up in my parenting because I was so afraid,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want that to happen. And so it
Speaker 1: was in those moments when I would look into my
Speaker 1: son's eyes and see him be afraid, are nervous because
Speaker 1: my fear was being projected onto him. I knew I
Speaker 1: didn't want that for him. I knew I wanted him
Speaker 1: to feel pride. I wanted him to feel powerful. I
Speaker 1: wanted him to feel a sense of agency. I didn't
Speaker 1: want him to be afraid and feel less than. And
Speaker 1: so I knew I needed to shift the way that
Speaker 1: I was orienting myself in my parenting. In two thousand sixteen,
Speaker 1: Trina founded Parenting for Liberation, a nonprofit organization whose mission
Speaker 1: is to help encourage resilient and joyful Black families. Parenting
Speaker 1: for Liberation is a nonprofit organization that really supports black
Speaker 1: parents and raising liberated children, and we do that through
Speaker 1: healing Justice as our framework that really looks at the
Speaker 1: impacts of intergenerational trauma, ongoing trauma, systemic trauma and violence
Speaker 1: that are experienced by folks who are black in the
Speaker 1: United States. What that looked like was me connecting with
Speaker 1: other black parents and learning from them about how did
Speaker 1: they practice liberation in their parenting UM reading books and
Speaker 1: learning about post traumatic slave syndrome and how that actually
Speaker 1: impacts the way that we parent our children. And I
Speaker 1: wanted to make a commitment to parents for liberation and
Speaker 1: like in my home operationalized liberation and also through my parenting,
Speaker 1: raised a liberated child and that resists all of the
Speaker 1: negative and harmful narratives about what it means to be
Speaker 1: black in this country. So literally, our existence and raising
Speaker 1: our child in this way is a form of liberation.
Speaker 1: The organization uses a whole range of resources like books,
Speaker 1: of podcasts, and workshops to connect with and celebrate black parents.
Speaker 1: I think healing looks like honoring Black culture and traditions,
Speaker 1: Honoring our bodies, thinking about the way that we can
Speaker 1: move our bodies and reconnect to our bodies, honoring our breast,
Speaker 1: honoring our voice. That could look like singing together, chanting together,
Speaker 1: humming together. That can look like um, reconnecting to Mother
Speaker 1: Earth and reconnecting to herbs and medicine. There's something about
Speaker 1: the connection to the medicinal offerings of Mother Nature, mother Earth,
Speaker 1: and I feel like returning to those kind of indigenous
Speaker 1: practices and ancestral practices UM are the ways that we
Speaker 1: can heal. Also, the impact of weathering, like that whole
Speaker 1: theory that like being black in this country, weather's on
Speaker 1: our bodies right and makes us age quicker. It's not
Speaker 1: about like, oh, go pop up hill and that's the solution.
Speaker 1: It's about trying to get to the root cause of
Speaker 1: the illness and figuring out what are the what are
Speaker 1: Nature's and Mother Nature's gifts for us that we can
Speaker 1: return to to heal ourselves. Parents and caliberation has three
Speaker 1: buckets of work that we really operate in. One is
Speaker 1: our healing justice work, and that really looks at healing
Speaker 1: from a black diasporaic wisdom, right, like there's so many
Speaker 1: black killers, UM, there's so much black wisdom around our
Speaker 1: ability to identify trauma and heal from it. And so
Speaker 1: we've partnered with UM organizations that have Black Hill healing
Speaker 1: and wellness practitioners, whether they be ray key practitioners, therapists, coaches,
Speaker 1: UM really tapping into like sound medicine and sound healing,
Speaker 1: like how do we move trauma through our bodies through
Speaker 1: um movements. The other bucket of our work is really
Speaker 1: about shifting our parenting styles, so like un learning some
Speaker 1: harmful parenting practices and trying on liberated parenting practices, and
Speaker 1: so that comes through workshops. I have a book called
Speaker 1: Parenting for Liberation, a Guide for raising Black Children. That
Speaker 1: book is full with tools and ideas and practices from
Speaker 1: over twenty different Black parents who are practicing liberation in
Speaker 1: their homes UM. And also the learning also comes through
Speaker 1: the podcast. I interview a variety of parents experts who
Speaker 1: are raising Black children, and so in those conversations they
Speaker 1: share a lot of knowledge. And then our third bucket
Speaker 1: of work is around community. We really believe in that
Speaker 1: African proverb that it takes the village to raise a child.
Speaker 1: We believe that community care, community wellness, and community healing
Speaker 1: is really a huge part of building this tribe to
Speaker 1: raise liberated children. The way white supremacy is set up
Speaker 1: is that it wants you to think that you're it's
Speaker 1: just you, that there's just something inherently wrong with you,
Speaker 1: and it's working for everyone else, and no it's not
Speaker 1: just you. You're not it's not just your kid who's
Speaker 1: getting racially profiled at school. When you bring everybody together,
Speaker 1: you might find out like, oh, this is actually what
Speaker 1: ingrained into the school climate, right, That it's not just me.
Speaker 1: My child is not just the issue, or I'm not
Speaker 1: just inept right, um, And so I'll bringing folks together
Speaker 1: is also a way for folks to be able to
Speaker 1: make those connections. That it's not an individualized thing. This
Speaker 1: is a systemic thing. Um, It's not an individualized experience
Speaker 1: of trauma. This is rooted in our country's history, and
Speaker 1: the pandemic has only strengthened Trina's resolve and the dedication
Speaker 1: of the community. She started to acknowledge trauma and learn
Speaker 1: ways to grow from it together. COVID has really shown
Speaker 1: how freaking innovative our community is, Like the ability to
Speaker 1: create new resources or to find ways to maintain haying
Speaker 1: connection even when we're distancing. Like I've just been able
Speaker 1: to also see the innovation and creative spirit of black
Speaker 1: people to like make those connections still happen. You know,
Speaker 1: I've been to so many zoom birthday parties, baby showers,
Speaker 1: all the things like we're finding ways. You know, we
Speaker 1: had a whaling circle where we just had facilitators who
Speaker 1: helped us move through grief because so many people are
Speaker 1: losing people Like those are the ways UM. Some of
Speaker 1: its innovative and some of it is ancestral. I feel
Speaker 1: like this is a moment where we're returning to our
Speaker 1: ancestral ways of being. Like welling circles is something that
Speaker 1: UM has always happened, you know, in the continent, and
Speaker 1: us practicing and here in this moment, and so I
Speaker 1: just really am appreciating seeing us reclaiming our Black traditions
Speaker 1: prior to colonization and enslavement. When we come back the
Speaker 1: transformational properties of so we that's right after that. I
Speaker 1: grew up around selling. My mother sewed. My grandmother sewed.
Speaker 1: My great grandmother who I had never met because she
Speaker 1: passed away before I was born. Apparently she also did
Speaker 1: some sewing. I really am a fourth generation seist. Lisa
Speaker 1: wolf Fork is an Associate professor of English at the
Speaker 1: University of Virginia, my alma mater, where she specializes in
Speaker 1: African American literature and culture, and by vocation, I love
Speaker 1: to sew. Sewing is a self care practice. I see
Speaker 1: it as something that I do that I enjoy. It
Speaker 1: allows me to escape from some of the day to
Speaker 1: day stresses of everyday life. The transformative properties of sewing
Speaker 1: to transfer warm a flat medium of fabric into a quilt,
Speaker 1: into a garment that can be worn, into a handbag
Speaker 1: or purse or backpack that can be carried there. There's
Speaker 1: something about the spirit of making that I find incredibly
Speaker 1: empowering and reassuring. And for that reason, sowing is really
Speaker 1: important to me. It occupies a really important space in
Speaker 1: my life. It has given me solace, is giving me
Speaker 1: um uh, the delight of a creative edge. It has
Speaker 1: really been something that is meaningful to me. When I'm
Speaker 1: in my sowing happy space, that my soul is at ease.
Speaker 1: But once I was going to sowing events and I
Speaker 1: was going to sowing expos or sewing classes, it was
Speaker 1: all white people and I was the only black person,
Speaker 1: And so that started to warp my vision so much
Speaker 1: that it almost felt like my own memory was being
Speaker 1: expunged because I was so like I was looking around
Speaker 1: at my context and it was just white, white, white,
Speaker 1: white white. And I picked up the magazines and it
Speaker 1: was white, white, white, and the se white magazines and
Speaker 1: the quilting magazines all white. And so even though I
Speaker 1: know that sewing is part of my ancestral story, I
Speaker 1: couldn't see it reflected in the industry at all. But
Speaker 1: my experience is actually very common. Black women are often
Speaker 1: encouraged to recalibrate things to center ourselves. Instead, we are
Speaker 1: invited to participate in events where whiteness and white people
Speaker 1: are centered. But then they pretend like it's for everybody.
Speaker 1: It's you know, what scholars call the universalization of whiteness.
Speaker 1: Because I wanted to do the sewing, and I wanted
Speaker 1: to do in a group context, I went with the
Speaker 1: groups that were available, and the ones that were available
Speaker 1: were older white women. But then Charlottesville happened. On August
Speaker 1: eleven and twelfth, two thousand and seventeen, hundreds of white
Speaker 1: supremacists and nationalists swarmed the college town of Charlottesville to
Speaker 1: rally over plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee.
Speaker 1: I was there, and I can tell you personally, the
Speaker 1: weekend was a violent, terrifying one, and as an advocate
Speaker 1: from Charlottesville, Lisa was in the thick of the counter
Speaker 1: protests and someone ran in and said, they the white
Speaker 1: supremacists are outside with fire. Stay where you are, and
Speaker 1: we had to like sneak out of the side of
Speaker 1: the building because we didn't know if they were going
Speaker 1: to come over there. Like we didn't know what was
Speaker 1: going to happen. And that was basically the recipe for
Speaker 1: the weekend was like not knowing what was gonna happen,
Speaker 1: not knowing what was happening. When a white nationalist drove
Speaker 1: his car into a crowd of counter protesters, Lisa was nearby.
Speaker 1: I happened to get separated from my group, which is
Speaker 1: bad protocol, and that's when we hear this bang, this
Speaker 1: this loud bang, and then I look up and there's
Speaker 1: a shoe. Somebody's shoe is just in the air, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, is someone throwing shoes? What is that? And
Speaker 1: it was a person who had been hit by the
Speaker 1: car and his body had flipped over and the fourth
Speaker 1: was so strong that one of his shoes flew off
Speaker 1: his body into the air, and from there it was chaos.
Speaker 1: And so what I realized is that that experience left
Speaker 1: me wounded. It left me hurt by racist trauma of
Speaker 1: a terror attack. And then on top of that, the
Speaker 1: then president said there were good people on both sides,
Speaker 1: very fine people on both sides. You had people in
Speaker 1: that group, excuse me me, And so that felt to
Speaker 1: me like someone had just poured cold water over my head.
Speaker 1: It was just dripping that it was. It was so
Speaker 1: shocking I had I did not expect to be it was.
Speaker 1: It was just terrible. It was just a bad bad
Speaker 1: The whole of it was bad. Lisa turned to Sewing
Speaker 1: her happy place, but within her own sewing group, she
Speaker 1: was once again confronted by racism. I went to a
Speaker 1: retreat in September of that year, which I should not
Speaker 1: have done. It was a mistake in retrospecting to a
Speaker 1: quick retreat in September of but I thought leaving Charlottesville
Speaker 1: would be good. Get out of town, um go and
Speaker 1: sew and just relax. But while I was there, people
Speaker 1: knew I was there, and so they asked how I was,
Speaker 1: and I would respond, oh, yeah, it was hard, and
Speaker 1: you know, we woke up screaming for weeks. Is just
Speaker 1: really difficult. And it turned out that me talking about
Speaker 1: my experience like not. I didn't go there and start preaching.
Speaker 1: I just went there to make some quick blocks, and
Speaker 1: they're a rule had been made in my absence that
Speaker 1: Charlottesville was not to be discussed. That was the rule,
Speaker 1: and um, and so I was like, well, I don't
Speaker 1: know what to do and should I just leave? Should
Speaker 1: I just go home? If that's not that's the case,
Speaker 1: And so I decided to stay. I stayed, and again
Speaker 1: I never brought anything up. I was just responding to
Speaker 1: questions that were asked of me. And then I went
Speaker 1: home and a few days later I checked the mailbox
Speaker 1: and when I opened the mailbox, my check for the
Speaker 1: next year's event is in an envelope, no note, no nothing.
Speaker 1: So me, still being me, I call around and I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: was the next event canceled? I'm just I'm just unsure.
Speaker 1: I got my check back, and this woman who I
Speaker 1: considered a friend, who had known for many years, said, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, the event's not been canceled. The only
Speaker 1: thing I can think of is that you broke the
Speaker 1: rule about talking about Charlottesville, and that's why you can't
Speaker 1: put And this is my favorite part. She said, I
Speaker 1: would never say that she's prejudiced. I would never think
Speaker 1: that this person was prejudiced, and that just doesn't seem
Speaker 1: like it's me. I was heartbroken and embarrassed. I was
Speaker 1: so embarrassed that I first I was heartbroken and it
Speaker 1: just felt like cruelty on top of the trauma that
Speaker 1: I had already faced. And then I was embarrassed, and
Speaker 1: I just felt like, who did these people think I
Speaker 1: was all this time? And it helped me understand that
Speaker 1: I had gone from pet like being their only black
Speaker 1: friend or whatever, from pet to threat. Lisa started Black
Speaker 1: Women's Stitch in July of two eighteen. For me, Black
Speaker 1: Women's Stitch is both a recovery effort, and by recovery
Speaker 1: I mean my own like trauma healing, but also recovering
Speaker 1: an ancestral story and thinking about sewing as an ancestral
Speaker 1: craft and being willing to say this is what's important
Speaker 1: to me, and I want to do it in a
Speaker 1: way that serves my soul. Black life is already living
Speaker 1: in what Christina Sharp calls in the wake of slavery.
Speaker 1: That means all of these little ripples and reverberations from
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century, the implications of slavery are still with us.
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to say that black life is a
Speaker 1: traumatic life as a whole. That's not what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I'm saying that there are certain things that Black folks
Speaker 1: live and survive and experience as a matter of course,
Speaker 1: that white people do not deal with. And so in
Speaker 1: addition to dealing with these things that we do, we
Speaker 1: can create a place of of comfort, of love, of support.
Speaker 1: And Black folks have always done this. That's what the
Speaker 1: Black churches, that's what you know, Like we have these things.
Speaker 1: We create artist collectives, we create uh yoga groups, we
Speaker 1: create you know, teachings and liberation workshops. We do these
Speaker 1: things to care for ourselves because we deserve care so
Speaker 1: and that kind of loving support. And if this was
Speaker 1: going to be part of a recovery project, it had
Speaker 1: to be something that wasn't just that it was motivated
Speaker 1: by personal trauma, but it couldn't be limited only to that.
Speaker 1: It is past time that sewing companies and pattern companies
Speaker 1: and threat companies see black consumers as someone in the background.
Speaker 1: And so for me to center black women, girls and
Speaker 1: fems and sewing was to create the community of care
Speaker 1: that I needed. And that's what Black Women's Stitches. Black
Speaker 1: Women's Stitch began on Instagram, where Lisa was able to
Speaker 1: connect online with other like minded black women. A court
Speaker 1: group emerged, as well as events and even a podcast
Speaker 1: called Stitch Please, And in March two thousand nineteen, Lisa
Speaker 1: organized the first Retreat, a week of communal living, sewing,
Speaker 1: and sharing. About a dozen women from as far as
Speaker 1: Texas and California came together at a home in the
Speaker 1: outer Banks of North Carolina. Lisa called it Beach Week,
Speaker 1: and it changed their lives. It is really hard to
Speaker 1: explain or summarize the nirvana of the first Beach Week
Speaker 1: experience of twenty nineteen, because I wasn't the only person
Speaker 1: that felt so moved by what we were able to
Speaker 1: do by just getting together. This is another kind of
Speaker 1: revolutionary act. In March, Black Women Stitch managed to hold
Speaker 1: their second annual Beach Week before COVID shut the world down.
Speaker 1: Like everyone else, the group went virtual. But as we
Speaker 1: were watching the cataclysms of COVID, we were also, because
Speaker 1: we are black women, watching the racist destruction of black people. So,
Speaker 1: you know, a mod arbor in February, Brianna Taylor in March,
Speaker 1: George Floyd in the midsummer. So we're getting reminders again
Speaker 1: that even in the midst of a pandemic, The pandemic
Speaker 1: of American racism is still steadily beating forward. And these
Speaker 1: are things that we don't have to explain to each other,
Speaker 1: you know, these are things that you know that we can,
Speaker 1: that we can talk about, that we can listen, that
Speaker 1: we can we can hear each other through, that we
Speaker 1: can you know, think about and make space for because
Speaker 1: it's also part of our story. But I also wanted people.
Speaker 1: I also wanted black women to feel less alone, to
Speaker 1: feel like when they were the only person at this
Speaker 1: particular sewing expo or in this class or at this event,
Speaker 1: that that is not the totality of our experience, and
Speaker 1: that we can create something where we are the beginning
Speaker 1: and the end of the circle. And it's too often
Speaker 1: in a white supremacist society where blackness, if it is
Speaker 1: talked about at all, it's kind of seen as something
Speaker 1: to overcome or something to ignore, or something that's a
Speaker 1: trauma based identity. It's one of the great blessings of
Speaker 1: this experience is that we know the truth about us,
Speaker 1: and we are able to share that truth and be
Speaker 1: in that truth with each other without supervision, without oversight,
Speaker 1: without feeling like we need to accommodate someone else's opinions
Speaker 1: or expectations. In working through trauma, I was able to
Speaker 1: create something that can provide solace and support for Black
Speaker 1: women who might face similar traumas. Um I can create
Speaker 1: an environment, or encourage the creation of environments where Black
Speaker 1: women will be cared for and protected, where we are
Speaker 1: not marginalized, where we are not tolerated, but where we
Speaker 1: are the point. Thank you again to all my guests today,
Speaker 1: Lisa wolf Fork a Black Women's Stitch, Trina Green Brown
Speaker 1: of Parenting for Liberation, and Dr James Gordon of the
Speaker 1: Center for Mind Body Medicine. You can find more about
Speaker 1: all of them and their organizations in the description of
Speaker 1: this podcast. Next Question with Katie Kurik is a production
Speaker 1: of My Heart Media and Katie Kurrik Media. The executive
Speaker 1: producers Army, Katie Curic, and Courtney Litz. The supervising producer
Speaker 1: is Lauren Hansen. Associate producers Derek Clements, Adriana Fassio, and
Speaker 1: Emily Pinto. The show is edited and mixed by Derrick Clements.
Speaker 1: For more information about today's episode, or to sign up
Speaker 1: for my morning newsletter wake Up Call, go to Katie
Speaker 1: currek dot com. You can also find me at Katie
Speaker 1: curic on Instagram and all my social media channels. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.