Unhealed trauma acts like a rock thrown into a pond; it causes ripples that move outward, affecting many other bodies over time. After months or years, unhealed trauma can appear to become part of someone’s personality. Over even longer periods of time, as it is passed on and gets compounded through other bodies in a household, it can become a family norm. And if it gets transmitted and compounded through multiple families and generations, it can start to look like culture.

But it isn’t culture. It’s a traumatic retention that has lost its context over time.

My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies,

Resmaa Menakem

READ THIS BOOK!! Especially African American People, with love, Heather

https://www.resmaa.com/