Trauma;thrived
Trauma; Thrived is a mental health initiative tailored to Black women and our collective healing because who else but us can truly see and ultimately help save us all? It’s us, sis. It always has been and always will be. Due to the memories given to us genetically and subconsciously, Black women lie in the intersection of the most oppressed social identities. Therefore, the trauma Black women have the highest predisposition to is transgenerational trauma, often referred to as the "return of the repressed,” “the past haunting the present,” or “the violence of collective wounds.” Specifically to Black people, transgenerational trauma stretches back to the traumatic events of the Middle Passage and slavery that marked the inception of the experience of Black people in America.
Mission
Trama; Thrived supports Black women in their journey to learn about our traumas and ways to heal them.
The impact of transgenerational trauma can be noted in the patterns of certain behaviors displayed by individuals of different generations within a family history. Black women encounter a unique form of devaluation that has been categorized as gendered racism (intersection of sexism and racism), and the impacts of this phenomenon are often unwittingly passed down from mothers (and other female caretakers) to female offspring and children in the form of transgenerational trauma.
Long story short, transgenerational trauma describes the longevity of the impacts of negative experiences because surviving trauma forces our brains into fight/flight/freeze/fawn mode, creating new pathways that influence our thoughts, actions, beliefs, and behaviors.
For Black women, transgenerational trauma can look like poverty, grief, and knowing the weight of the Black community follows them everywhere they go. For Black women, it can be being systematically oppressed for both their race and gender. For Black women, it can look like nothing - because Black mothers often arm their daughters with hyper-independence, silence, and a lifetime of overthinking every interaction, causing them to hide their pain.
Vision
More specifically to Trauma;Thrived…
Transgenerational trauma looks like motivation because we refuse to remain boxed into traumatizing spaces and stereotypes and overall limitations placed on us by outsiders hating from outside of the club.
