"Am I in danger? Am I safe?"

I had a moment of recognition when I first heard this statement while listening to the podcast On Being with Krista Tippett “Notice The Rage; Notice The Silence”. The podcast was recommended to me by my therapist who thought the practices discussed by Resma Menakem (trauma specialist, author and healer) would be helpful for me. At the start of the podcast, I didn’t realize how deep Resma’s words would seep into me while touching the generational trauma and personal trauma I’ve been working on during my therapy sessions.

Krista and Resma discuss the ways that we all carry the history of trauma in our bodies, passed down for generations in our DNA, and the ways this shapes everything we know on a conscious and subconscious level about “race'“. I knew that Resma would talk about practices we can do to change our perspectives, reactions and understanding. I did not know that his words would lead me to want to further research the generational trauma, the vagus nerve and how our bodies are home to more than we admit to carrying.

I’ve dealt with anxiety for what seems to be the span of my entire life. My own mother has a theory that she gave me anxiety, and somehow made me an anxious person. Her assumption isn’t far from the truth, though it doesn’t completely encapsulate the magnitude of how trauma gets passed down, and the ways our bodies are hardwired, even before birth, to react to the world we will soon come to know. The field of epigenetics has revealed to us that trauma touches and can span 14 generations. It’s a wild concept, that we hold in our DNA 14 generations of trauma.

My therapy sessions have peeled back those layers of trauma which used to be hidden beneath my own. It’s eye opening to see how they intertwine and twist together sometimes. We know trauma intrinsically, separate from our personal traumatic experiences as POC, or People of Culture, a term Resma uses to personify the concept.

He states, “If my mom is born as a Black woman, into a society that predicates her body as deviant, the amount of cortisol that is in her nervous system when I’m being born is teaching my nervous system something. Trauma decontextualized in a family looks like family traits. Trauma in a people looks like culture.”

We go through our daily routines reacting on a conscious and subconscious level to our experiences. We rarely stop and ask ourselves what’s going on internally. It’s why “checking-in” with ourselves is such an important practice. How are we feeling? What do we need in each moment? I challenge you to ask yourself these questions sometimes. Notice what comes up for you. Our bodies are taking in and processing even when we aren’t aware.

Almost 40 minutes into the podcast, Krista Tippett says, “The core of our bodies is always asking first, “Am I in danger? Am I safe?”. As a woman of culture, I can identify with this statement. It’s unfortunate that my body naturally operates in “I’m in danger” mode. It’s been a long journey of trying to teach my body that there are moments when I am safe but being able to recognize those moments takes time, and practice. It’s especially difficult in a world where both my gender and my skin color determine my safety depending on the situation I find myself in.

Ladies, think about the limitations we place on ourselves for the sake of our own safety. Not walking alone at night, not traveling alone, etc.

Gentlemen, think about what it’s like to move in the world where your safety doesn’t mirror ours. Take in the similarities we may have with our race and the trauma we face, and the vast differences we have based on our gender identity.

Though our experiences differ, our bodies are asking that same question when we walk into a room, or walk outside. Each moment of our existence, the question is there and our bodies are trying to gauge, “Am I in danger? Am I safe?”

So the big question is, “How do we start to heal?”. Resma suggests starting with tuning into the body. During the podcast he discusses practices we can incorporate into our lives that address the ways our bodies store trauma.

How can we give our bodies more of what they need when we live in a society that places so many of us in danger without any fault of our own? The answers are both simple and complex, and stretch further than what I can write in a blog post. But I want us all to think deeply about who we are, how we move through the world, and how we can help ourselves daily to receive more of what we need, no matter what that looks like.

Do our bodies have unmet needs? Do we need to be more mindful of who we share our energy with? Do we know what we need on an emotional level, and how can we attain it?

I’m starting my research on this topic which has so many layers of its own, by buying Resma’s NY Times best-selling book My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending our Hearts and Bodies. I know that what I read will lead to more research but most importantly, a better understanding of how to move forward and give myself what I need to feel more at peace with my place in the world.

It’s a bittersweet feeling reaching for tools that can help you heal; bitterness because our healing is solely our responsibility despite our trauma not being our own doing, and sweet because there’s a peaceful life on the other side of healing. There are resources out there that we can grasp. We may not have a full blueprint on how to navigate this, but we have tools. I hope that as we are exposed to those tools, we as a culture will gravitate towards the inner healing we all need to push us forward.

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