Surrendering Grace: On Racial and Colonial Trauma

Recently, I’ve been grappling with the ways in which I’ve found racial and colonial trauma have manifested in my day-to-day life. It’s been a difficult task, and in many ways, I feel like coming to terms with the parts of me that are still affected by this has mirrored my experiences of grief and shame.

I used to be so angry. When I first became conscious of the depths of damage that had been done, I immediately directed blame on to the people around me who perpetuated the harm that I had internalized. I blamed my parents, I blamed my friends, until I realized that I was directing anger at most people in my life who I had grown to love and care for deeply. The alarm bells started to go off then. We all wanted to exist in the same capacity: not hurt, not looked at, not in danger.

There is a real journey to go through when you’re having to unpick why another 8 year old girl was telling you to bleach your skin when you were the same age, or why your family bears hearing jokes at the expense of the colors of their skin year after year, or why you were made to feel dirty as a kid when you were surrounded by white children.

There’s a lot of forgiveness and despair that comes with it, too; the realization that the people around me were just as hurt by the system and histories I was hurt by allowed me to approach the pain and myself with a lot more tenderness than I had before. I grieve for the younger version of me who tried for years to prove to others that she was not all that different from them; I offer grace to the parts of me now whose muscle memory forces her to do the same; I feel shame for the same parts that still ask me to live with such precise calculation. I also know that I am not the anomaly in this case. I consider myself lucky to have the tools to unlearn what I am unlearning.

Truthfully, I wish that I had someone when I was growing up to tell me that my plea for acceptance was just a response to fear, and that it was okay to fear a system that had hurt you and your loved ones so recklessly. I wish someone had seen what we were all going through.

Just because you don’t see hate and violence taking place doesn’t mean that it’s not there. More than that, it absolutely doesn’t mean that the cogs that were ignited by them aren’t still turning in people’s heads. The psychological effects of enduring such violence can only be seen and can only be tended to when you know they are there – our humanity is often shrouded by the perpetual lack thereof of the systems that bred this hate.

Use this as a cue to check in on your friends. Ask them about the experiences that have carved out the ways in which they access and engage in spaces. Let yourself be the resource that offers them the comfort and safety they were not granted.