KAMARA TAYLOR

How does trauma impact our lives? How do we get over fear that events that harmed us in the past now play on the anxiety over our future?

With my daily interactions with people, there is so much pain that is buried and that we don’t recognize. The fear of being a person of color in America is not an imagined thing. It is completely real.

The fear of me being stopped by police, beaten and falsely arrested stems from watching my brother die after being shot one time in the abdomen by police. We all hear the justification, forever the same, that cops don’t kill. I’m a reflection of my post-trauma. I’m a mediator of my trauma.

I am reminded of the scars from multiple surgeries undergone by a young woman who was 17 years of age and was beaten by police. And the beating was called “justified.”

Now I am watching and seeing this past trauma and understand it feeds a post traumatic impact.

How do we encourage community relations and peace if we are victims of segregation and isms? The same country that emancipated slavery under Lincoln welcomes racism and segregation and beats citizens under the premise of equality.
So my fears are healthy.

Should I not have post anxiety in a country considered the land of the free, yet it’s a country that isolates and attacks others to empower a presidency? Should I not have a healthy fear wondering if the melanin of my skin may cost me my life? Should I not have anxiety wondering if the Willie Lynch letter (Dec. 25, 1712) was not made up as a mental plan to enslave the minds and mental growth of Black people?

Should I not be fearful of having kids in a country that defines them before they are formed in my womb?

Do you have fears for yourself, your children, your well being? Does your reflection in the mirror show trauma that occurred in the past but is still visible today as post trauma?

If I am a reflection of America, then why am I so traumatized by her?

Food for thought. Keeping it Real.