racialtrauma

In his award-winning documentary Parts Unknown, Anthony Bourdain visited Koreatown in Los Angeles and spoke to several self-confessed ‘bad Koreans’ who had defied family expectations about their lifestyles. All of them referred to the han (or haan) as a family or communal pressure to meet expectations, such as becoming doctors, lawyers, or accountants. Korea’s supposedly […]

One of the characteristics of trauma that may seem confusing from the outside looking in, is that the more traumatised we are, the more we defend trauma. However, when we understand how trauma works, this seemingly paradoxical stance reveals itself to be entirely congruent with the emotional mechanics of trauma. The more traumatised we are, […]

13 April 2021 was the 12th day of Derek Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd. Amid late winter snow flurries, his brother Philonise Floyd spoke outside the Hennepin County Government Center in Minneapolis. “The world is traumatized.” If the world was to stop—just for a moment—and ask me what I had to say, […]

In Trauma exists as a series of ripples, I describe the multiple, interconnected sources of trauma that may exist in our lives. This trauma is inside our minds, our psyche, our physical cells—our DNA. Yet even this doesn’t help us comprehend the full extent and impact of human trauma. Once we raise our children in […]

In Trauma exists as a series of ripples, I describe the multiple, interconnected sources of trauma that may exist in our lives. I’ve broken down these sources into five key layers. In this article I’m going to focus on the fourth layer, racial trauma. Racial trauma is trauma that affects all people of colour, causing […]

In mid-2018 I wrote a blog titled The 3 layers of trauma – ancestral, generational, current-life, in which I ascribed all trauma to one of these categories. Fast forward 18 months and the 2021 Intergenerational Trauma Conference (ITC). I’m now seeing trauma in a much more nuanced way. There are key layers—5 of them—but it’s […]