Healing ourselves for our babies’ babies

need therapy most days. Wow. And one more important thing to mention, we're married. We are. We created this podcast to open dialogue about some of life's most taboo topics, things most folks don't want to talk about through the lens of a millennium married couple. Then adds to the term that we say every day. So when we say dead ass, we're actually saying facts, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. We're about to take pillows

off to our whole new level. Dead ass starts right now. So I know typically to story time and it's funny, it's comedic, but for some reason, like I was not in the mood to be funny today, and I always try to find humor or just as a way for people to digest our topics. But in this particular case, I don't think there's anything funny about what we can discuss.

So and speaking about generational traumas, I'm going to talk about how my children, uh kind of shine a light on me to realize what I was doing and what I wasn't doing properly as a father. And it comes down to a time where you and I were walking down the street and Jack's and was I think he

was about four. We're walking down New York Avenue. We were coming back on the train and Jackson had said something slick out of his mouth, and I had said, I had said to him, like, you know, you need to watch your mouth, and he said something slick again, and at that point I had already decided in my mind that he was gonna get his ass whooped. You remember, So I remember you looking at me, and I looked at you and I said, all right, today is the day.

Because we typically don't um raise our kids with corporal punishment like that was something that we decided because we both grew up in UH Baptist Church. That's where we met when we were young, and we grew up with corporate punishment of school. We grew up in school that was a Baptist church school, Fling Baptis Academy, and they used corporal punishment to discipline kids. So you and I felt like we didn't want to deal with that because you know, we dealt with it and we remember how

it felt. But in that moment, I felt Jackson was being disrespectful. He needed to be told a lesson. So I remember going upstairs and you know, he was like, well, I'm gonna let you do what you do, because you know you typically let me do that when it comes to Jackson, and this was our only child at the time, and I remember saying, you know, having a conversation with

but I was gonna give you a spanking. And I remember hitting him with my hand two times on his butt and him just like looking at me, and he was almost five at the time, hitting at me because I know I was pulling back because I don't want to hurt him, but he was looking at me like he wasn't gonna cry. So then my first instant was to grab the belt because now I'm upset because I'm trying to do this without hurting you. But you're looking at me with this smug look on your face. So

now I'm gonna go grab the belt. And when I went to go grab the belt, I remember the feeling I had when my father used to telling me to go grab the belt, and you know, you go into closet and you got to get the right belt because he makes you pick the belt. If you pick the small, skinny belt, he's gonna send you back and you're gonna get more licks. So I remember going to grab the belt and thinking to myself, like, this is just so wrong.

And at that moment, I said, Jackson, go sit in your room, don't turn on the TV, keep the lights on, and just sitting here. And I remember sitting him sitting in the room and coming out to you and say, I don't know what to do. I'm kind of lost. And then you're like what you mean, And I said, well, I hit him, but I don't want to hit him

any harder. But I don't know what to do. And it was at that moment that I realized that whipping your kids as a generational curse, you know, like that's something that we don't have to do, but because that's what was done to me, that's the only way I knew how to parent, and I realized at that point I had to figure out another way to get through

to Jackson. So family history, family curses, family secrets are all pretty much terms that describe generational trauma from having ancestors who were once enslaved or having a parent who survived physical abuse as a child, the effects of traumatic events that can be passed down from generation to generation through behaviors, through practices, and even, believe it or not, hormones passed from mother to baby during pregnancy and um.

While we can't change our past, learning what experiences affected the way we operate within our family units and our communities on a more larger platform can certainly help us change the future. That's what we hope. UM. So, going back to your story time, it's funny because I do remember that situation. I do remember Jack and getting smart and being light man. This little boy is just as much as Sagittarius as he is an aries because the

smart talk back. Those are definitely things that I did as a child, or I tempted to do all I didn't do it because my mother would not let me live to see you to day However, I do remember having those moments where I just wanted to just like talk back and just lash out. So seeing a little bit of that injection made me feel like, this is definitely the combination of you and I, you know, because I even think about how he did. Our debates and arguments get sometimes and how much we just want to

side at each other. Um. But what struck me and that was you reverting back to what you knew or experienced as a child with your father when you said, you know what, I remember the feeling I felt when my father made me go get the belt, and then you going to get a belt for Jackson or having him thinking about too, Like, tell me a little bit

more about what that felt like for you in that moment. Well, I mean I remember speaking to my grandmother because I was a very smart, outlet type of kid, and I remember one time in particular, Um, we we used to pray, and my grandmother said, you know, she had this thing and it's a scripture. I don't remember the scripture, but it says when three or four enter into the Great, into the presence of God and ask for something through prayer, God will grant it. I remember her asking me too.

She said, we need to do outside and clean the yard. And I was like, well, since you said the three or four of us enter into prayer, that will happened, how can we can't just pray that the yard be cleaning and be cleaned. So right, being typical smartass, my grandmother picked up the fly swater pop hit me with the fly swater and told me to take my ass

outside and clean the yard. So after a while, me and my my nana, she we had a very good relationship, Like we used to sit up and talk as I got to be a teenager, and I said, Nana, why you used to just hit us all the time, Like why why was it that your first inclination was to hit us? And he she said, you know, well, I grew up in the South, and you know, black boys were not allowed to speak to adults. Children would be

seen and not heard. And I was just like, okay, I understand that, but why she said, well, I grew up during the time where if you were a little black girl boy a little black girl, but a little black boy in particular, and you got disrespectful, you could be either hanging from a tree or drag behind a truck so it was her responsibility because we were now growing up with her in Tennessee Mortown, Tennessee in the South, to make sure that my parents kids, My parents got

their children back at the end of the summer. So the way you typically teach children back in the day was through pain. So she used to say to us, he who does not hear will feel that used to she used to say that all the time because you don't want to feel it. And she grew up. You know, her parents grew up with money, and she was one of the black people in the in the community who had money. Her father owned fields. Other black people pick cotton for her father. He drove a Cadillac back in

the day. He that's where she came from. But she grew up during that time where even if you were predominant one of one of black people from influence, you still had to fear for your life. So they parented their children through fear. So it was I do not want you to die. So if you do anything outside of what I think is right as a child, you're donna get hit because if you get hit, then you'll straighten up, and that comes from post traumatic slave syndrome.

If you want to keep people in check. You keep them in check through fear and through pain, which was a trauma that was passed down from generation to generation to generation. And here it is now, the ninety nineties and my grandmother is explaining to me the reason why she was the way she was because that's what was passed down to her from her parents. And that's when I realized, like, so, we don't have to hit our kids to teach them how to listen. We choose to

because that's all we know. She didn't know any other way. So that's what she did to her kids and my father, And I'm not gonna lie. My parents were probably the first in our family to start moving away from corporal punishment. Yeah, I would say it was it's safe to say the same thing with my same thing. Right when she got to the eighties and the nineties, it was like a renaissance of black intellect, and it was like we became more cultured and we tried different things in different ways

to get things through to our children. So there are still a lot of people who believe in spirit of the rod and spoil the child. So I've heard that it's also like a parenting strategy that may still be you know, in use for some people. Well, I mean, it also depends on your ability to make mistakes. Right. So for example, if you're a young white man in America, you make a mistake is slap only it's not that big a deal. You're a young black man in America, you make a mistake, gas can be locked up or

you can be dead. So you figured a couple that with the fact that the majority of people who I'm discussing my family grew up either in poverty or right above poverty. Socio economic conditions give you even more trauma because now you're dealing with the militarization of the police

force in your neighborhoods. So now that that fear of being taken to jail a murder is now tenfold because before it was my grandparents should tell me you worried about the KKK, You worried about the white boys coming down and you know, coming down and grabbing one of your kids. But now legally the police can come to your neighborhood and just take your kids, take you to jail,

beat you, shoot you, ask questions later. Absolutely, and these are traumas that traumas that we as black people have to deal with and have dealt with since the dawn of time. Right, so even with the evolution of time, is clear that there are certain things that still remain.

It might have been the KKK then, but now some people are feeling like it's the police that we're contending with and black people being more susceptible to these issues because of economic issues, because of systemic and systematic um racism and oppression and all that. Um. You know, it's it's crazy because trauma kind of shows itself in so many different forms and I almost feel like an episode like today's episode can touch on certain parts of trauma,

but there are other ones that we can dive into. Um. But let's just talk about trauma in general, right. UM. Sadly, most people, even some mental health therapists, struggle to understand, you know, what is emotional and psychological trauma? Like what is it? Because it affects about of the United States, which is pretty pretty big when you think about it. That's a quarter of the entire population, um, and that's a child population and about six of adults. So UM.

Some of the causes of trauma can be you know, losing a loved one, it can be a natural disaster, living with a parent or partner that misuses substances. UM. What else do we have severe illnesses? And there's so many different things witnessing acts of violence. So when we experience any kind of trauma, we have both, you know, an emotional reaction, some people are physical, sometimes both UM.

And this can be looked at as like anxiety, trouble sleeping, feeling disconnected, UM, feeling confused, having intrusive thoughts, or just worthdrawing from others. It can kind of rare itself in different forms. UM. And in children, this can look like attempting to avoid school. UM, stomach aches. You know, you have that child that's always sick, not feeling well. UM, that's probably a sign to dive deeper into what their home life is like. UM problem sleeping, eating, anger, you know,

showing out UM, attention seeking behaviors. UM. So transitioning back to post traumatic slave syndrome. And what exactly is intergenerational trauma because that's very specific to the Black community. UM into generational trauma is more of a psychological term that argues that trauma can be transferred from generations to generations or between generations. Um, much like what you said with the story of your grandmother passing that down to your dad and then to you, and then slowly us kind

of gravitating away from that. So after our first generation of survivors experienced the trauma, they're often able to transfer to their children, other generations, other offspring. And it's also maladaptive behaviors and patterns that are passed down from children, or rather from parents to children and then passed to the children's children. So so I think it's important for people to understand why everything you just said is so important. Right,

And I'm gonna give you some historical context. Um, after the Great Depression, the New Deal was created, right, and so was f h f H was created with the Fair Housing Act so that we can create more homes because there weren't enough homes for people. But you know, the f h A also made it so that they created redlining, which means they gave contractors huge subsidies and

discounts for creating great rural, white suburban neighborhoods. But while they gave them these subsidies, the one catch was you cannot sell these homes two black families. So think about what I'm saying the government created the f h A. This is after the new deal, all this money is going to subcut to contractors to create homes, so you can create beautiful homes, beautiful communities. We're gonna push all of the white people, the middle class white people into

these homes so that we can help boost the economy. Right, all of the black people were going to push them into the ghettos. Right, this is what red lining is, right, and what are the ghettos? The ghettos typically mean you may have some homes. But what the fh A also did was said we're not going to ensure the mortgages on the homes of black families, which means you can go buy a home, you can own a home. If

you lose your home, we won't ensure it. If things happen in your community, we're not going to ensure those mortgages. So if your homes, homes get burned down, which a lot of times think about Tulsa, Oklahoma. They were burned down because sometimes mobs came in and burned down whole neighborhoods.

So and the reason why I say that because people need to understand once you've created redlining and you pushed all of these black people who were freed from slavery, made it through reconstruction, were able to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, get jobs, and create families. Now you push them into the ghettos. In those ghettos, you militarize the police, you have poor health care, you have poor everything. You put all these black people in this area and

then you say, oh, y'all a poor, uneducated people. Do you know what kind of trauma comes from living in that type of environment where you fear what's outside of that neighborhood, but then have to survive within that neighborhood. Because also with with everything that happened with redlining, there were laws created to villainize and criminalize black people. So they were finding reasons to lock people up and use black people for convict leasing. If you look up what

convict leasing is. Convict leasing was the new form of slavery pretty much. They used a Vagrancy Act of eighteen sixty six. They used a Vagrancy Act to say, you know what, anybody who was homeless, couldn't read, couldn't write, or didn't own property was a vagrant. So after slavery, so after was that black people people free. So now you lock these people up and now they have to work for free because they leased them out to private companies to do the same labor they were doing their slaves.

So all of this trauma is happening to black people underneath the the government, the gods of the government, freedom, the gods of freedom, right, and they disguised it as freedom. They disguised it as freedom. This is where they pushed the black people. Right now. You have all of this going on, a lot of trauma happens because socio economically,

when you're poor, you make poor decisions. Absolutely. You know, it's so funny when people, um particularly white people who don't understand history, say that racism doesn't exist, none of this is happening. What do they mean everybody has the

opportunity to work. That's probably the most seen thing I've seen from some of my some of my Facebook I don't even want to say Facebook friends anymore, because it's just literally people who have known throughout my life that I'm just like, oh my goodness, I knew you as a child to be like a really nice white person, and all of a sudden, I'm like, that's how you're really thinking now, but saying that everyone has just go get a job, and it's just that simple to get

a job, not really understanding the history behind it. Remember you said you have a conversation recently with another white counterparty. It literally did not know the of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. It was a white friend of mine who did not know that the Revolutionary War and the Civil War with two different things. Did not understand what

the Confederate army was the flags. Had no clue When I explained to him that the Confederacy wanted to separate from the Union because they wanted to continue slavery, he had no clue. And after having this conversation, he said, wow, because he never really paid attention and it wasn't taught intensively in schools. So think about it when people aren't taught this history and then we call it history like slavery or slavery was so long ago. People came to Jamestown.

The slaves came to Jamestown in sixteen nineteen. That was four hundred years ago, right. The Vagrancy Act was eighteen sixty six. Oh, that was over a hundred and sixty years ago. The Fairhousing Act did after the Great Depression that was the n a long time ago. Redlining still exists today. If you and I were to go try to buy a home in Long Island, New York, we

will be pushed to certain neighborhoods today. People don't understand that in the neighborhoods we will be pushed through Today, the taxes will be lower, the school systems will be worse, the groceries will be worse. Everything will be worse, which creates trauma for our families. Also, when you move into neighborhoods where poverty exists, crime happens. It's inevitable, it's inevitable,

and crime brings trauma. I mean. Research indicates that I mean families living in urban you know, poverty stricken um areas, they associate a lot of the hardship of depleted resources, like you said, burdens of like high stress, um incivilities, and exposure to multiple traumas because ethnic groups are over represented.

And it makes sense, doesn't it Though it does, It doesn't make sense because if socio economics really defined where we are as people, right, and you hear people say, uh, one percent of the population control of the world's wealth, that means there are a vast amount of people in the world who are not happy with their place in life.

So but even with those people, you push a certain you marginalize a certain group of people, typically black people or people of color, because not all people of color are created equal, but black people in particular. Then you wonder why there's so much trauma and so much post traumatic slave trauma in our families. It's because of these issues, and it's important for we as black people to understand our true history, to understand why we are the way

we are, because we say we were our hardest. We're hardest on each other. You hear you hear black men say all the time, black women are hard to deal with. You hear black women say all the time. Black men don't love us, they don't protect us. If we understood history and how we got to this place with so much trauma, we would understand how to give each other some grace. You understand what I'm saying, No, I understand.

That's exactly what came to mind when when you mentioned that, Um, it's literally not just the fight that black people have against everyone else, but the fight that we have within our own communities. That's black man against black man, black woman against black women, black man against black woman. You know, there's there's that deep rooted um trauma that's now spilling

over into it. And it really makes me think about how much truth there is to the fact that people are stating now that black women don't feel protected by black men. And I know you don't feel that that's necessarily true. I couldn't say that I feel that way based off of my own experiences, but I know that you recently have had some ideas about you know why that maybe can you share a little bit of that. Well, this is what I've also learned, is that I learned

that we do not shrow mass media. We don't control the things we consume. We are fed the things that we consume. Right, for example, UM shout out to Trouble because I was about to say last season you had a discussion with I had a discussion with the three gentlemen and I asked them a question. I said, how many black men do you think marry black women? Right?

And most of them said about fifty fifty right, And thanks to Trouble Um, statistics show that over of black men marry black women, regardless of socio economic status, which means it didn't matter if they were poor or if they were rich. Over eight of black men marry black women, which makes you wonder why are we being told through the media that black men do not marry or love black women, Because then you have the question what you're

consuming if this is what you're seeing? Right, So, we see on Twitter all these repost these reposts that black men don't love us, black men don't love us. But studies show and statists stick show that of black men are marrying black women. That means that that is a lie. Well,

we already know what these algorithms be looking like. You see what I'm saying, what exactly is being banned, what exactly is being You have to take it with a grain of salt, because I think people now look at social media as there is no media really anymore at this point. It's just people putting out information. Anybody with a set of thumbs or a voice note can set out a post and just say anything. True journalism does

not exist anymore. It's all about clickbait. It doesn't no one, no, you don't have to do anything in order to be considered a true journalists. All you have to do is put up the best sound bite or the best picture and get people to click it so the advertisers can go to it. But I think that we as black people need to start understanding where we are the same thing for black women, right, studies start to come out black women are the most least Black women are the

least desirable of all in America. Remember, and they told black women the more education you receive, the least desirable you become. Because black women earned college degrees to the one over black men. So then that became a big thing. Oh twice as many black men are earning college degrees

and black black women are earning college degrees and black men. Well, let's really look at the statistics, because the statistics show that white women earned college degrees that to the one in white men, right, so that makes them less design these statistics is really the ultimate question. Because we actually did have somebody write a listener letter. I forget what it was, what episode, but she felt like her degrees were just intimidating to black men. And I'm just like,

but why would that be? Who exactly is saying that? You know, and people may have their experiences with it. I particularly haven't necessarily seen it in my eyes, you know what I mean, But just across the board, that seems to be the narrative that's pute. That's why when we were on the show Black Love a couple of seasons ago, it was so important for us to be able to share our story. It's another reason why we continue here. Our story about seeing is believing. We already

know that. If you're not, if we're not combating these sayings and these myths and these you know, statistics that we don't know where the sources really come from. If we're not combating that by pushing out more content that's around the black family unit, that's around black love, then it's only going to continue to get worse. Well, I mean, another hashtag came out that said black love is revolutionary because we haven't seen it purposefully, we haven't seen it.

And I want people to think about this. Why are we so hard on each other? Right? And we talked about trauma. How is well how are these traumas being passed through generations? So just for a minute, I want you to close your eyes, if you're listening, close your eyes and think about what happens. This is the nineteen sixties. Right, you have a strong black man who's out there every single day, going out there to feed his family. He decides that he wants to speak out for his rights,

he wants to speak up for his humanity. Right, strong black man, strong black women at home, taking care of the family, making sure that everything is due properly. You have a family unit here, right, the strong black man is now ripped out of the family unit, either incarcerated for trump up charges or murdered at the hands of state sponsored execution by police or even by the KKK. So now that family grows up without a dad, no income.

You know that mom struggles. Right now, that mom is left there to fear because remember, in the sixties, we lost a ton of leaders, a ton of black male leaders. We lost in the sixties through assassination, through death, through incarceration. Right now, you have a generation of young kids who grew up without male leaders. Right. You have young women, young young women who had to raise families on their own.

So now you took the male leaders out of these neighborhoods, and you have these black women who you're constantly feeding to them. You don't have any fathers because you're not worthy. Black men don't love you. That's why you're not here. Forget the fact that our leaders were assassinated and killed. The reason why you don't have fathers in the homes because they didn't want to, because they didn't want to

be there. You weren't worthy, You aren't worthy, You don't deserve So those women through anger who have the right. And I will be the first to say this, black women are angry and have a right to be angry. If you knew our history as a black woman, you would be angry too, because I had I had a woman say to me one time and I heard you say black women are angry. I said, yes, they are. She said, what if I said black men are angry? I said, I am black, I'm a man, and I'm angry.

I'm angry. I think it had a negative connotation around the whole black women being angry thing, though, yes, you know, because you think about women how they compare to a white woman or there there are other counterparts going into an environment where they may be super yeah, super assertive, or they're passionate about the way they feel um and that's always translated as anger. I get it, and it's it's not necessarily angry, but if it is, she has

a reason to be. Let me tell you something. If you are black in America and you know your history and you're not angry, something is wrong with you. Something is wrong with you. So imagine these women in the sixties growing up angry, having to raise these children on their room. Not only do you have to raise these children, I have to go out and get a job to be able to support because you took the other source of income out of my home. Those kids grow up

without fathers. There's gonna be trauma involved when you raise a household without a father. Those kids grow up to become parents. They grew up without seeing the nuclear family. You know what, that trauma becomes the next generation of people who are going to feed whatever trauma they had, whether it was from poverty, whether it was from being beaten because their mom has so much anger, whether it's free from an absentee father, whether he was locked up,

or whether he was murdered. Like, these are the things that black people have had to deal with overtime. And then that mom, though, those kids grow up to become moms and dads. So now that young man never seen what a father is like because his father was taken from his home, he doesn't even know how to be a dad. And imagine you grow up through that time, and if if you're a young woman who was angry, because if everything is happening and you don't understand what's

happening to you. Because remember when I did UH Prototype for the ten years in Brooklyn, I was around a lot of single moms. Prototype is the mentorship mentorship program we did in Brooklyn. I was around a lot of single moms, and I remember hearing a lot of single black moms telling their sons, you ain't never gonna be shipped just like your father, and not understanding where this

trauma is coming from. Because those young men are gonna grow up and start to treat black women like ship the same way their moms treated them like ship, And that trauma gets passed down through generation generation, and we don't understand that it's coming from a place that was designed to create trauma for us to do that to each other, you know what I'm saying. So it's not even a thing. Well, who's to blame because that's what happens in the black community too. Well, who's to blame?

Is it the single black mom who talks down to the kids and she's to blame? Or is it the father who left? Is he used to blame? Um? And to be perfectly honest, it goes back to slavery. Really here, at what point you have that will we have as a people. I think it's kind of happening now, but kind of having that lightbulb moment where it's like, aha, we have been set up, we have been pinned against

each other. Um, are we going to be having these conversations openly so we can now begin to heal and repair. You know, I've said before that I feel like we are a generation where we are now no longer dealing with or feeling like we have to deal with those dramas that have been passed down that we're addressing them now that we're calling people out, We're just like, yo, own your ship. This is what happens, and let's have a discussion about it so we can begin to heal

from it. And you know, there's so many symptoms of intergenerational trauma that rears its ugly head within the family unit. You think about a family who might seem just kind of emotionally numb, or they have the sense of being strong, but is that a facade? You know, you have the families who feel like discussing this is a sign of weakness. You know, I'm I'm now peeling off layers of my skin for you to see what's really at the core.

And now that's me being labeled weak. Well, I mean, that's that's a generational trauma that's been passed down from black man to black man, because black men have been taught from the dawn of time that we can't be emotional because we can't show weakness. You know, even my grandfather. One of the greatest stories my father talked to my grandfather is how he was making a candy yams for Thanksgiving and it's spilled and the holes and you know how hot candys gets spilled on his hand. He had burns.

My grandfather tied the thing up, sat down, cut the turkey, had dinner with them, never shed a tear, and then went to the hospital because he just felt like he couldn't show anything, he couldn't be vulnerable in that moment. And that's when he's like, my father is tough. You know, my father is tough, and that's a sign of like, yeah,

I didn't cry, I didn't show any weakness. Black men are taught from real young that you can't show weakness out here because if you grow up in a place where there's poverty, right, you're always gonna have to fight for everything that you get and you'll be prayed on. And that comes from trauma, that comes from having to from redlining, having to me put in a situation where you can't thrive because there's not enough resources for everybody.

So it's only the strong survive, which means I have to I have to elbow you and kick you down in order for me to get there. There's only one

play the food. There's seven of us. Yeah, which is funny too because even just like growing up in Brooklyn, you see that tough kid walking down the street, and I know de value you've had sometimes where you've walked down the street and you see this kid coming at you, and if you stare him back in his eye the same way he's kind of trying to stare at you, you notice he'll look away because he's not really tough,

like a lot of it is. Everyone's trying to play tough, but just because you're forced to play tough, and you're forced to be tough within the confines of what is the area you live in, you know. And there's also I mean going back to just the symptoms of the generational trauma that's been passed down. You know, family might have trust issues with outsiders, and that can cause conflict, you know, having to not tell your business or not tell people what's been happening, a lot of keeping things

hush hush. You talk about that in your family all the time, all the time. It's literally a thing. And you know, generational trauma has reared its ugly head in my family. Um, not my immediate family per se, but you know, cousins, an extended family who has had to deal with so many different forms of abuse, and there's this um protection around the person who is the abuser. We can talk about that, you know what I mean,

there's just protection around the abuser. There's this um everybody looked the other way, you know, and that might have been okay for prior generations, but you know, I have family members who are around my age range that are just like, no, this is what happened to me, and it happened at the hands of this other family member and what I'm not going to do is be quiet

about it. And then you can see people kind of being like, well that was so long ago though, which is probably yeah, that was just so long ago, or I thought we were past this, or you know, getting those kind of responses. Imagine what that feels like to the person who was abused. See, the funny thing is when you're a kid and you're being abused, your heart from young that you have no voice anyway, so you

can't say anything. So you go your whole childhood being abused, and then when you become an adult and you want to say something, then they tell you what it happened so long ago because you really have no fear instill in you when you are abused as a child that you can't say anything. If you are to say anything, it's going to cause you know, an uproar in the family,

and you have to keep your mouth shut. And or if they're making it seem like as if it's something that's okay and something that's acceptable, when deep down you know it isn't, and then you come to find out as an adult that it wasn't. But once again, that comes from generational trauma. The fact that we as black people have talk. And this is not just a Black thing, because abuse, especially sexual abuse to young boys and young girls,

happens in every culture. But it also starts from UM society's patriarchal way of feeling like men have control over everything and we can do whatever we want to anybody, and you can't say anything without repercussions exactly. And that's and that that goes beyond race. That's happened in every culture. And what happens is is we start controlling people by contro holding the youth and telling them at a young age, you have no voice, no one will believe you anyway.

And what we can stop, do what we can do to stop UM because I want to get to how do we cure some of these generational traumas right? The first way we can cure some of these generational traumas is by educating our people. Right, educating our people. I think one of the worst things that happened to the

black community was desegregation. And I'm going to explain to you why my mom and I'm proud of this, I said some of my mom was the first class to desegregate Brooklyn and one of the first black students to attend James Madison High School. Proud of that because of

what it stood for. But I'm also a little smarter now and knowing that the fact that we put our black kids in the school with all white teachers means that they control what our black kids learned, which means they control what we learned about our history, the American history. You see what I'm saying, which is why I was taught from a young age that Christopher Columbus was a hero and didn't find out until my twenties that Chris of Columbus is the Hitler version. Is Hitler to Native

Americans or the Indigenous people? I wanted to say, Native Americans to the Indigenous people, You see what I'm saying, And it's because they controlled what we learned. So by educating our children is the first way that we can eliminate generational curses. The second way is to give children

their voices back. Stop telling kids to shut up and hush and allow them to say what's on their mind and how they feel, giving them safe spaces to be able to say how they feel, of course within context and within the realms of being respectful, but they have to feel comfortable being able to speak with their parents. If it's not a parent, whoever is a trusted adult. It maybe an or uncle, It may be a school professional, somebody that they can feel comfortable letting, letting, letting go with.

So I think about children and how impressionable they are, of course with their family and with their parents for particularly, and how that generational trauma goes from the parent to the child, and then you can see the child now exhibiting behaviors i e. Your grandmother having the trauma of knowing what it was like to raise children post um, not post slavery, but Jim Crow south right exactly, and then how that was then passed to your father and then to you, and just really honing in on how

children of survivors of abusers of abusers within family members, realms and just um, how how is it that Sorry I lost my train of thought. What was that saying? How is it the traumas passed down even if the trauma doesn't exist? Yes, okay, so even though the trauma may not exist for the children, how our behaviors then passed down? And how does that affect children? It's very simple and the way I related relate to it is, um, you haven't watched the movie enough with j Lo. Yes,

And she was beat by the by her husband. She was beat by her husband, so she never felt safe. So whenever she grabbed her daughter, every couple of months, her and her daughter left, every couple of months, her and her daughter cut her hair, died her hair, right, every time they were out some where, they were always looking at the exits, always looking at the windows. She's creating a trauma to her daughter that never existed because she her daughter was never abused. The mom was abused.

So that behavior that she's exhibited has continued, has passed that down to now her daughter. So now her daughter's going to grow up. Right, every couple of months, And I know it was a movie, but I've seen this in real life every couple of months, changes her hair, whenever she gets somewhere, she sits with her back against the wall and looks for the exit. But this is normal behavior to her because this is, for example, how many black kids have probably never had any issues with cops.

The cops pull up while you're at the light, what do black children do? They get nervous? Oh, my goodness, do you think about the video that went viral of the young boy who was playing basketball in his yard. Yes, then the cop car was driving past and he went and hid behind the car because well, I mean that was probably different just because now there's so much going on. It wasn't different at all. But I'm just saying that's

something happening now. But yes, it is something that has happened for years where you're already coming along and you're not doing anything. You're in actually basketball, perfect example. And because that trauma has his parents felt, dealing with police has automatically been passed down to this child. And what happens is white people don't understand. Sometimes it's just like, I don't know why you're afraid of cops, because I've

never had an issue with cops. But until you sat in the car with your parents and watch a police officer come to the window when your parents get quiet and they tightened up, and you're sitting in the back like what's going on. Until you've sat there and that happened repeatedly, will you understand why that fear comes? You know, and it comes from every source of When my mom was pregnant with my sister, she might have been about six months pregnant, and I remember actually was probably a

little less than that. But anyway, we were driving through Meal Basin in Brooklyn, which is a predominant the white neighborhood. Um I was ten years old at the time, and it was around Christmas time, so they would normally put up all of these bright lights, and the houses were a little bit nicer than where we lived on our

side of town. So my mom is like, you know what, let's just drive past there one night after you know, she picked us up from our activities, so we can just see the lights, you know, because Christmas is our favorite time right here. And then I remember we got into a car accident. Somebody had made a turn, like ran the stop sign, turned into my mom's car, and instantly I was just nervous because I know she's pregnant. I don't want to lose the baby. So I was

remember being very, very very upset in that moment. But I do remember the guy, a white male, actually two of them, they were in a car together, approached my mom in the vehicle and we were in the back seat, my brother and I and they were like, didn't you see us coming? Why are you even in this part of the town anyway, like what are you doing over here? Anyway? What are you supposed to be doing? And I remember

my mom being like, how dare you? Like, I'm a nurse will probably one day save your mom's life, like should be more or less, But you know, she had a few other choice words because she closed the door. But then I remember that feeling of being like, oh my god, like now I can't even be in this part of town. So I had a friend who I met in school, um in high school, and I remember asking like, oh, where do you live and she was like, oh,

I live in Mill Basin. I remember instantly going back to that time and feel like I'm probably not going to be welcome in your house. You may be nice, but your parents might not want me being dropped off into your home in that part of town. And then after that, it was just always like the idea of like oh my god, seeing how scared my mom was over there, not wanting to go back to that part of town because I'm like, oh my god, like my

mom clearly was like disrespected. And now we have boys if they say they go into their friend's house in Mill Basin and we bok, what's the first are you going to say, right, don't go see So you're passing down the trauma that happened to you to your boys when they've never experienced it, absolutely and being a mom being crazy, but I'm like, no, you can kind of foresee those things and it could potentially affect them as well. Parents.

Parents do that to their children all the time, And I don't want to call it seeing ghosts because typically parents do that in fear because they do not want their children to ever have to experience that and be caught off guard. So I don't want to call it seeing ghosts. But realistically, when you exhibit that type of behavior consistently to your children, they in turn, you know,

become almost like shell shocked. Like that's when you get that post traumatic slave syndrome where everything scares you and you're worried about everything and you can't exist and function in a world where you're afraid of everything, and you have to do in your children too, because we even know how Jackson, for example, is just a total empeth like he completely is always thinking about other people. He's genuinely concerned about the welfare for others all the time,

and we know how much our children can handle. So imagine us unloading our fears onto someone with Jackson's kind of personality that can be so overwhelming for a child. That is exactly why I was very deliberate when he started asking me about George Floyd and Almand Aubrey and

Brianna Taylor. I was very a little bit about how I was going to approach the racism topic with him because I didn't want to unload all my fear and anger on him because I know he'll take that and I don't want him to exist in a world where he thinks he has to fear everything. And that's what led us to writing the children's books. So shout out to our publish I'm not gonna releasing it because the book hasn't been released yet, but mcbraun. But by the time you guys hear this, maybe he got with us

and we created this children. That's why. That's why with this conversation, I really wanted you to kind of lead this conversation because you were doing so much research recently about history and about um everything that kind of got us to this point, which is very necessary I think for our children to be aware of and to know so that way moving forward, they understand at least where we've come from and know how we can move accordingly

within our family units and of course as individuals. So when it came to Jackson asking me about you know, Aman Aubrey, Brianna Taylor, George Floyd, I decided I was going to be very deliberate about how I gave him this information because I didn't want to create an intergenerational trauma, right and for those I'm gonna read off some bullet

points of what intergenerational traumas are. So, for example, unresolved emotions and thoughts about a traumatic event are negative, repeated patterns of behavior, including beliefs about parenting, untreated or poorly treated, untreated or poorly treated, substance abuse or severe mental illness, poor parent child relationships, and emotional attachment, complicated personality traits or personality disorders, content attitude um no content attitude with

the ways things are within the family. So part of the reason why I was very deliberate about the delivering that information to him was because of all these things. So, for example, unresolved emotions and thoughts about a traumatic event we talk about things happen in the families all the time, right, so I we you know, we had the situation where I was gonna spank Jackson. Right, he's gonna ask me at some point I spanked him. If I say I spanked you because I spanked you, leave me alone, get

out of my face. That's unresolved. You know what he's gonna do. Say. You know what, my parents were pretty good parents. My father spanked me. I'm gonna spank my kids without even knowing why. You see what I'm saying, it's just unresolved. And then and that that behavior becomes acceptable, which brings me to the other point, which acceptable behaviors and beliefs that exists within the family because it's unresolved, which leads us back to something I hate talking about this,

but it's the truth, sexual abuse. I had a young man. I had a young man in prototype who I found out he used to respond poorly to male authority figures. He alway used to shrivel up, and at first I thought that he was just a little soft. So I was like, you know, let me just see if I can poke him, getting his face and see if he can man up a little bit. Then I was gonna my plan was to applaud him for standing up and then get everybody to roll around him. And you know, understand,

but this was I was in my twenties. I didn't understand generational traumas. The more I screamed to him, the smaller he got, The smaller he got, the smaller he got till he stopped coming. Then I found out from one of his mom's friends, because the mom never said anything, that the young man had experienced traumas with the mom's boyfriend, and the mom's boyfriend was sexually abusive to him, and

she sat the monster to me. The reason why she allowed it was because she was sexually abused by her mom's boyfriend, and I was just like, so she just let she just let him do it because it happened to her, and she said, this is my home girl. We tried to talk about it, we went to therapy, but she felt like as a woman in the house, she didn't have the authority to tell the man she was dating what too and what not to do with her child, the same way her mom didn't tell him

what to do with her. And at that point I had to realize, like, wow, here I am not understanding the nuance within each family and each child, and I'm trying to just assert this male dominance and sorry, it's hard in that circumstance then not to pass judgment or to say like you're a grown woman now, like regardless of what transpired in your childhood, then having this transpire with your child, it's like, at what point do you say, like, I know that this is not supposed to occur, And

it's me not passing judgment because I just don't know how it affects m psychologically, right, and how that that mindset is, which is why therapy is so important and actually addressing these things. You know, it's I would have never guessed that would have been the outcome, the reason as to why, you know, she was allowing this to happen. So so now I'm going to explain to you how that trauma and experiencing that trauma leads us back to

today and Jackson, right, that young man at thirteen. Once we were able to break it down and I was able to speak to him, I finally got him to open up about what he was going through. When he told me the thing that was the hardest for me to deal with was him saying it's not that big a deal. It's cool. I'll deal with it. So him normalizing not feeling made me feel like if he grows up, is he going to then feel like it's okay, it's normal.

I can do that to someone else's child, or do that to my child because it was done to me. It was done to my mom, that's normal. That leads me to Jackson dealing with Brianna Taylor, dealing with armand Aubrey. I remember feeling when I watched the George Floyd incident, right. I remember looking at the TV. I got mad for a minute, and then I said, this is just part for the course. It's not that big a deal. I might as well go back to doing what I do

because this is never going to change. So it became so normal to me that we as a people then allow it, like like the Brianna Taylor um verdict. I remember watching the Rodney King verdict, and they will all acquit it and they rioted in l a riot towre that place apart. Right, Brianna Taylor, it's a black woman, No one's everyone's acquitted. Well, this is part for the course.

We've become so desensitized to these drawing, these traumas, these generational traumas that happened at the hands of the government, that we're just letting it happen to us as a people over and over again. And the worst thing about it is they're constantly showing it on social media and TV so that we continue to become traumatized. So every time they show a black person get murdered by police and nothing happens, you know what, we start to do

another day. And that's why I was very deliberate about giving Jackson the history of our country so that he knows that it's not okay, but also showing him that every time these things happened and we complained about it, a little bit of change happened, even if it wasn't a great big change, Okay, but Emmett till everybody wasn't arrested, everybody didn't go to jail, right, but they were laws passed that didn't allow for it, and the same thing

to happen next week to another child. Brianna Taylor. I know everyone is up set and everyone is piste off. But the one thing that we can at least hang our hat on right Prior to Brianna Taylor being murdered, no knock warrants were considered legal even though they're unconstitutional.

This case and this child created the Brianna Taylor Law, which means that no knock warrants are no longer legal in black and brown communities because no knock warrants were happening in a disproportionate rate in black and brown communities then white communities. And people don't like to hear it, but here is the fact. Before crack cocaine became an issue in the United States, cocaine, powder cocaine was an epidemic in this country. They did not militarize the police.

It's the it's the truth. It's the truth. It was an epidemic in this country. Richard Nixon created the War on Drugs based on powdered cocaine, powdered cocaine, not crack cocaine. He created the War on Drugs on powder cocaine. But they utilized the law to militarize the police on crack cocaine because it happened in the black communities. And that's

what and that's what this all comes down to. We as a people need to understand how traumatic situations and generational traumas are being passed down in our community and it's being pushed through the government. Like these things that are happening or not just happening in your family and my family, it's happening in all about communities because of what we're going through in the laws and legislation that's

allowing it to happen. If we educate ourselves, our history, who we are as a people, we can stop it. But we have to educate ourselves. And I think fighting the great fight, meaning fighting against government or community within our communities. I think ultimately it goes back down to

even the family units. Healing what's going on in your family unit, in your household first, and then being better equipped to then now with a clear head, figure out and strategize how to now approach these bigger systemic issues. That's the key that right there is the key. You

have to take care of your home first. We realize that there are issues, but if I realized that they're they're generational traumas in my family, I gotta correct that first, and I got to educate the ones underneath me so that we can move forward to awareness is key when it comes to healing. UM. I mean without recognizing that there is something in your family happening in your family system, then you can't change it. So a couple of tips

for helping with healing generational trauma. You know, first seeing the patterns, knowing that they're existing. UM. Some are more obvious than others. There's domestic violence, abuse, anxiety, gender roles, among others. UM. Second step is to building the awareness around what triggers you to step into these established patterns. Is it yelling? Is it disrespect? Are you feeling devalued, physical aggression, watching people being bullied? I mean, the lists

really could go on and on. And then once you're aware of your triggers, the fourth step is becoming aware of how you react to these triggers, so there's never different ways to react to it. Are you gonna shut down? Are you're gonna be angry, violent, yell? And um. Learning to put roadblocks on those patterns. So setting up a trigger word or a phrase that helps you recognize when you're going down a pattern. Setting up a support network

as well that can help to hold you accountable. But what's the key to the first step is seeing the patterns. You can't see the patterns if you don't know how the patterns got here exactly right, or you may know how the patterns got here, but you don't see them, so you can go either way, um, you know, and then finally give yourself grace. I mean, these patterns have literally been embedded in our DNA, in our makeup for for a long period of time, and not hell overnight.

It takes a lot of time. So asking for help from a professional sometimes it's a great option to supplement these steps. Um. Sometimes the trauma that you encounter um can be so ingrained that it may require a little extra work. But give yourself grace. It's stored up, and it's in the body and it's in the brain, and we need to release ourselves absolutely well. Listen, We're gonna take some time, give you guys a brain. This is

a heavy episode. We gotta pay some bills, all right now, we're gonna come back try to tackle these listener letters. Like I said, and um, everything we're talking about today, it's not going to be fun. But this is something very very needed for our culture, our people, and for us just to heal one day at a time. So we're gonna get to these listener letters you may. We're gonna get to these as first and then come back to some listening letters. All right, and now we're back

with listener letters. I would like to say that this is a majority of folks favorite time in the show. Um, and I'm gonna dive right in. I'm gonna read this one for you, baby, and let's see what what two cents we have today. So I've been in and off again on again relationship with the father of my children for ten years. We have two kids, and we both realize that we're getting older. We're making plans together for the future. How Ever, our relationship hasn't or wasn't always

the best. He was at one point mentally, physically and emotionally abusive. We haven't had that problem in a very long time. However, I do not think I'm over some of the things that has happened. I feel like I'm still holding onto resentment towards him, and I don't know what to do. He's a great father and has made

so many changes to become a better man. I don't want to let the past stop my family from being together, but I also don't know if it's a good idea to move forward with marriage when I'm still holding resentment, I honestly just don't know what to do. Wow. Well, Um, the one thing I can say is that she didn't mention going to see help. She didn't go get therapy because. UM. What I also realized with with traumas is that sometimes the traumas you have are within and it's really not

the person that you're with. You could be having some own some of your own inhibitions, you know, as a mom, but that doesn't help the fact that he was abusive before. So if she hasn't dealt with whatever is broken inside her, she'll never be able to forgive him, you know, because she hasn't dealt with that. So I think maybe she should find out why she can't forgive what's going on with her first, and then once she figures out why she can't forgive, if she still can't forgive. If she's

figured that out, then she shouldn't forgive. But if she can figure that out and then say, you know what, it's worth working on my marriage, then I say she can move forward. But it's not an easy fix. UM. It's not just a yes or no. This is something you have to put work in. Um. There's two phases. There's a part where she has to work on herself first to figure out what the best thing for her, then have to work on what's the best thing for

her marriage. Yeah, I'm wondering this resentment that she's holding, Is it uh something that she's discussed with him too? Does he know that she's still harboring these feelings of resentment? Has every an open dialogue between her and her significant other, so he knows how much this has affected her and

still affects her to this day. Because if they're making plans for the future, she says that we are making plans for the future, then I would assume that he is in a space where he's, you know, ready to move on to the next phase. But if she's being with hell, I think therapy is a great way to tom to kind of get down to the root of

the problem and the root of the resentment. Um. You know, some people may not recover from right, some people the most physical and emotional abuse, and that's fine, and that's that's fine. If if there's something that you're not willing to deal with or try to get over, that's perfectly fine. The problem is, though, is that they have two children. And I know people talk about the degenerational trauma that happens through divorce, but there are generational traumas that happened

excuse me, through staying today because children. Yes, it's literally like a pylon at that. Children know when Codeine and I are arguing or not even arguing, when Condeine and I wake up upset at each other because we were having an argument the night before, and Jackson, all the

boys come in the room. They come in the room completely different, as if there was a note on the door saying mom and Dad just arguing, you know, like they walk in there quiet, they walk over, don't say nothing to me, They work over here, Mommy, you okay? And I'm like, how they why do they go over to her first? Of course, the boys will always check on Mama first, which is the way. This is the way I want them to be, which is the way

I raised them. So I appreciate that Jacks and Kyrae cas, but sometimes staying together for the kids is the worst thing you can do for the kids. So I would say try to you know, try to get some help um work on yourself internally, then work on your marriage and to your children too. And see if they haven't affected any in any circumstance or any way by this circumstance, because depending on their ages, they probably know if they robust four year old like Cairo, they know exactly what

time it is. That is you know what I mean. So I would say it starts with healing yourself first, finding out, you know, is this resentment something that you can get past and seeing the effects that it has on your child Absolutely would definitely be a great place to start. I'm right. Well, if you'd like to be featured as one of our listeners letters, be sure to email us at dead s Advice at gmail dot com. Yes, that's d e A d A d v I c E. You sure you left out the s. Think about as

I was think about giving dead advice. I want to give advice to people want bade want to That's d e A d A S S A d V I c E at gmail dot com. All right, on to the moment of truth. Let me tell you were great this episode. I want to say I almost felt like I was like interviewing you, But like I said earlier in the show, it was necessary because I know you've been doing a lot of research lately about this. Um

as we get this children's book out, which has been great. Um, that's the name of the book project, the name of the book, the Ellis Is and the time Machine. Why do we say black lives matter facts? So in doing that, you've had a ton of research that I feel like I'm still learning more and more, which is amazing because I grew up in America as a child that went through an entire school system that still has to educate my own self on some of my history and the

things that really matter for sure, for sure. So I think my moment of truth today Normally I'll give pitch to you, but I'll just get in my not the way because you had a lot of things that you had to say today, which we're amazing. Um. But I think my moment of truth is, you know, there's not going to be a way for us to actively and effectively fight the bigger fight if we're not healing the generational traumas within the nuclear family, the nuclear and extended.

I should say, so healing the house first. We will then be in a better I feel, mental space, emotional space to then tackle the world because we are existing in a space in a world where we're up against

so many different, so many different obstacles. So if you can create that peace at home by having those discussions that may be difficult, you know, calling out Uncle so and soul for something, or pulling out Auntie so and Soul or grandma or grandpa or Auntie whoever it is, calling them out early and trying to get past that and then knowing that we're not going to have to trickle down effect of those generational traumas to future generations. Absolutely, um,

I think you you hit it right on the head. Um. The only thing I would add to that, my moment of truth for today is that the best way to cure generational traumas is understanding your history. And it's not good enough for you to just know your family history. You have to know your culture's history because if you can understand why your family is in the situation is in, you better understand who your family is. You know, because when you start with family, you can't just start with

the one uncle. You can't start with your grandfather. You gotta understand how their ancestors got to where we are so that you can have empathy and give them grace to then fix what they were creating because to be honest, everybody at that point was doing what they thought was the best for them and their children at that time.

We can always sit back and judge, look at the past and say, y'all shouldn't have did this, But that's unfair because our kids and our kids kids are gonna look back on us and say, mom and dad, you should have never done that. While we're trying to do that and we're trying to do the best we can with what we have, but why are you doing better? Yeah?

The best way to your generational to traumas is to understand your history period all right now, So if you follow us on social media, you should be at this point. Please thank you. Be sure to find us on social media at dead Ass the Podcast and of course I'm Cadeine, I am and I am Devouring. If you're listening on

Apple Podcasts, be sure to rate, review and subscribe. Dead As dead Ass is a production of I Heart Media podcast Network and is produced by the Norapinia and Triple Follow the podcast on social media at dead as the Podcasts and Never miss a Thing Les