Our Trauma Response: The Living Walking Dead -- Mass Shootings, Baby Formula Shortage, & Roe vs Wade

The past few weeks have been challenging and difficult for so many of us. People from all races, gender, and ages have had their lives taken from them, parents have struggled to provide milk to the babies and women have been stripped of their rights to make responsible decisions about their own bodies.

While America is deemed the greatest and most powerful country in the world, I also believe we are one of the most traumatizing.

We have seen an outpouring of heartbreaking posts, feeds, stories, and articles online.. this one included… YET it doesn’t feel like we are any closer to change. This is not an individual problem. This is not about being unable to stop “bad people” from doing bad things.

In the Hispanic Culture they say "Te lucha es mi lucha." Your fight is my fight.

This is about waking up and understanding that we are all being traumatized by the events in this country. This country was built using trauma-inducing tactics. Slavery, Violence, Rape, Murder, Abuse, Shame, Guilt, the list goes on. And in order to maintain its Power it will continue to allow and promote trauma-inducing events to occur.

The amount of trauma we are experiencing and have been experiencing can cause our brains to stay stuck in "freeze" mode. It’s what our brain tell us to do, because it’s our greatest chance of surviving all of this. Trauma will mentally and physically immobilize us and prevent us from fully accessing our thinking brain.

As a people, we don’t know what to do, we feel hopeless and defeated. So we stick with our regular schedule. We disconnect from the news because our brains and bodies can’t take hearing this over and over again. We try to escape using substances or we double down on our work because we can’t deal with this all. Some could say we are like zombies..

Literally the living walking dead.

This, my friends, is a trauma response.

And that’s why it’s hard for us to come up with solutions and figure out how to deal with this.

Here’s what you need to know about trauma: While it has extreme negative impacts to the social, emotional, and overall health and wellbeing…. Its negative impacts CANNOT overpower CONNECTION, which is the FIRST survival strategy activated in our brain. It’s why we all called, texted, or spoke with someone when we heard the news about the latest shooting.

We do not have to feel powerless and stuck in freeze mode.

I am here to tell you trauma does not define us. Our strength does. I am not saying that we "be resilient" during this time and I am not saying we tolerate this horrible things … I am saying that we wake up, gird ourselves with NEW knowledge, NEW Tools, Tactics, & Strategies, to CONNECT more and fight this fight to get out of freeze mode and access the wonderful brains we have been given, and be resilient enough to get through to the other side to trauma.

Our babies did not ask to be here, nor do they deserve to inherit problems of this world that we adults cause and don’t fix.

In the Black Community, we say “Hurt People, Hurt People”. We are all hurting right now and that’s normal.. but it is our responsibility to learn how to heal from that hurt, restructure systems, programs, and societal norms, so that we can reduce trauma, heal from it, and help others do the same.

If you want to learn more about what you can do to change the dynamics of this country from a trauma-informed lens, visit my website at www.byellc.org. Sign up for one of my training sessions and join the mailing list and get involved! It is time for all of us to understand what trauma really is, how it impacts our brains and bodies, and how to be resilient enough to act!

With Love, Care & Respect for All,

Vernisha Crawford