Episode 3 of Divesting From People Pleasing.

When trauma is held in the individual and collective body, shame, grief, and rage are passed down for generations.

The Heart · Divesting From People Pleasing: Memory pt 1

The Heart · Divesting From People Pleasing: Memory pt 2

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Divesting From People Pleasing is a mini series written, performed, and sound designed by Nicole Kelly, edited by Chiquita Paschal, and hosted by Kaitlin Prest. Design by Phoebe Unter. Music in this episode: Wonton Soup by Audiobinger, Away by Meydn. This episode includes 2 excerpts from It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How To End the Cycle by Mark Wollen. Special thanks to Meenadchi, whose Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication workshop was the impetus for this series. Produced with the generous support of Mermaid Palace & PRX.

transcript

Kaitlin Prest:

From Mermaid Palace and Radiotopia… welcome to…The Heart.

[theme music comes in, sounds like a beating heart]

I'm Kaitlin Prest. This is episode three of Divesting from People Pleasing. In the last episode, NK realizes that she's looking for release, a way to externalize shame. In this episode, she finds a way. Episode three: Memory.

Nicole Kelly (NK):

When your mother is still a baby inside her own mother your DNA already exists.

[moody synth builds tension, bubbling noise quietly begins]

To put it simply, we receive aspects of our grandmother's mothering through our own mother. The traumas our grandmother endured, her pains and sorrows, her difficulties in her childhood, the losses of those she loved who died early. These filter to some degree into the mothering she gave to our mother. If we look back another generation, the same would likely be true about the mothering our grandmother received. These patterns appear to be hardwired into the brain and begin to be formed before we're even born. How our mother bonds with us in the womb, is instrumental in the development of our neural circuitry.

A life completely devoid of trauma, as we're learning, is highly unlikely. Traumas, do not sleep even with death, but rather continue to look for the fertile ground of resolution in the children of the following generations.

[this was from] “It didn't start with you, how inherited family trauma shapes who we are and how to end the cycle” by Mark Wollynn.

NK:

We started going on these Black history vacations. Me, my mom, my dad and my sister. We went to Washington, D.C., where my mom is from. Because we wanted to visit the new Smithsonian, the African-American History Museum. At the museum, you work your way up from the basement, from the exhibits on the invention of whiteness and the Middle Passage. Through emancipation, reconstruction and the civil rights movement. In that section, the section that covered the civil rights activism of the 50s and 60s, I stood looking for a really long time at this photo of Ruby Bridges.

When she was six years old she desegregated an elementary school in New Orleans in the same year that my mom was six years old. When Ruby arrived at the school with her mom they were escorted past an angry mob of white parents who later refused to send their kids to school with the Black girl. I've known the image of Ruby Bridges since I was a kid because my parents had a framed print of The Problem We All Live With, a Norman Rockwell painting depicting a little Black girl in a white dress. She's flanked by four white men in suits, U.S. Marshals. And the small girl's head barely reaches their elbows. A racial slur scrawled across the wall behind them. It looks as if someone has thrown a tomato at them. The fruit slides down the wall behind her, leaving a red trail in its wake. When I was a kid, I thought the girl in the Norman Rockwell painting looked like me. Her hair's in pigtails and stiff braids that stick out straight behind her head, just like mine did. In the photo that inspired the painting. The photo that is in the Smithsonian, Ruby is ascending the steps of the school with the U.S. Marshals. In the museum, it's the text beneath a photo that captures my attention. Beneath her photo, the text quotes one of the U.S. Marshals who said: "She showed a lot of courage. She never cried." I can't help but think about the six year old girl. She never cried. The angry mob, the men in suits.

Would she have been any less heroic if she had cried?

It's been three years since Divesting From People Pleasing, and three months since I started therapy and I'm in another workshop.

[The voice of someone leading the workshop begins to come in and out: kind of keep us regulated or let us know]

In class, we study the brain, the prefrontal cortex.

[Okay heartbeat you can slow down because you're in a really safe environment]

The part that handles emotional regulation and safety and the fight or flight response

[or, you know, stomach you can relax and it's okay to eat right now]

We also learn that there's a third response, to go numb

[because it's the body's way of saying]

when your body thinks we can't make it out of this alive.

[And so I'm going to keep you safe by making it so that you can't feel anything.]

Soon I realize I need a witness to my shame.

[NK's voice documenting her experience: I just want to remember this, that I just...]

I feel compelled to document and share this process [got out of therapy and told my therapist that um] just like, to me, it just means it's like that feeling is like all the things I don't say, like all the ways of suppressions.

[these awkward expressions of sexuality in public are like really unbearable]

I want to just like disappear, I want no one to ever see me again. I want

[I don't want to have to be seen]

divesting from people pleasing.

[I spent all day yesterday just like immersed]

all of the things that are unexpectedly coming up for me, by other people, which I start to think of as my decolonizing

[NK's voice tearful, emotional: like I wish I didn't feel so like alone in this process.]

Meenadchi:

My name is Meenadchi, and I facilitate nonviolent communication workshops specifically with a decolonial lens. So today's workshop is going to be looking at shame and rage.

NK:

Before that day’s somatic exercise we discussed our relationship to shame and rage, and I share that I'm not easily provoked to anger other than the righteous rage I direct towards bigots, rapists and unjust power structures.

Meenadchi:

I think a lot of people are ashamed of feeling angry, but like who are the bodies that I think could benefit from being able to have access to rage in a healthy, safe space?

NK:

Before that day's workshop some of us had been asked to participate in the somatic exercise, which asked us to channel and release our rage, which asked us to push against Meenadchi, our facilitator for three minutes. It was both a vocal and physical exercise and I was reluctant to do it.

Meenadchi:

We're outside and the moon is probably the brightest light. And there is also this quality of energy that is just running around and through the group to where the group feels really connected. One of the things that feels like a thread that connects us is that we're all people of color. Almost all people of color.

NK:

One by one the people Meedadchi had chosen before went up to do the exercise.

Meenadchi:

You put your hands on me and we would move together and you would just push as hard as you could.

NK:

If I felt anything in my body in the workshop, it was the familiar feeling in my throat when I'm holding something that I need to express.

Meenadchi:

[breathes in] And at the same time you would be making vocalizations and they can be any kind of sounds, they can be grunts, yells, whatever you want, but no words.

NK:

I mostly felt it while watching others release their rage.

Meenadchi:

And we're also moving out of the story or the narrative of what the rage might be. Right. Especially because a lot of the work is that underneath rage is a lot of grief.

NK:

Each time someone finished their turn, Meenadchi would look at me, but I needed several invitations to participate and then permission to use their body. And finally, reassurance that they could actually withstand my release.

Meenadchi:

So you're gonna put your hands on me right here.

NK:

I placed both hands on Meenadchi's body beneath their shoulder.

Meenadchi:

So when you're pushing on me, I need you to push consistently.

NK:

And I started to push a little.

Meenadchi:

I can really feel the hesitation and resistance.

NK:

But then I whispered to Meenadchi,

NK:

[whispering] I just don't think that I can push you, I can't, I don't think that I can do it, I can't push you. I'm sorry.

Meenadchi:

I know that this is not an activity that is beyond what her capacity can hold. And there is an underlying need for me to be able to take us there, to be able to get us there. And I know that I can't do it by myself. I know that NK can't do it like it can't be just the two of us. And so I'm hoping that pulling in these other three people will help us get us to where we need to be.

NK:

In response Meenadchi said to the rest of the group:

Meenadchi:

Okay, okay. So I'm gonna have three people come stand behind N.K. and I just want you to be with her and just make sounds as she goes. Just make whatever sounds feel appropriate as we're working.

NK:

So then I push against Meenadchi’s body

Meenadchi:

So now we're moving.

NK:

Slowly at first and then faster.

Meenadchi:

There's a stronger energy coming from her end.

Carmina:

And as she's doing it like, her head moves up and down, she's kind of just breathing.

Meenadchi:

And I can also feel the energy of the three people behind her.

Carmina:

You would pause in between, even though you're still resisting and just kind of take deep breaths, and like start pushing again.

Meenadchi:

I'm sensing, hoping, imagining that that energy is flowing into her body.

NK:

But I heard the people behind me making different noises. I wasn't sure how many people there were. They are sort of like making those noises of release.

Carmina:

Like it was a lot of release of like air, deep, and like long with every push. It came like a sound from your throat, guttural, like grunts. Also, like I was also crying because I was like feeling all of this emotion, like radiating. There was like one final good push. And then and then it stopped, it ended. It was so emotional.

Meenadchi:

It feels like NK falls into my arms. It's like the first time that we've had, that I feel like she has let me hold her in this space or in this way.

Carmina:

It was very palpable, that there was stuff inside that needed to come out, so.

NK:

A total of six people did the exercise. I was the last one.

Afterwards, we went back inside and we talked about it. And there was no explicit or linear connection made between the conversation about shame that we'd had earlier that day and this final rage exercise.

Carmina:

Well, just because in the previous sessions, the folks that had gotten picked for this activity, had expressed that they had a hard time talking about how they felt or communicating their feelings or even like not being able to cry.

Meenadchi:

I don't know yeah. Just to the comfort level you had with, like, your feelings, feeling your feelings. I knew that there is just like stuff in there that wanted to come out.

NK:

But someone said — Carmina said — the most revelatory thing.

Carmina:

It was just kind of like you were exhausted. It just sounded like you were tired of holding this stuff.

NK:

And I was just so shocked that she said she could feel that because in that moment when she said, I hadn't been thinking about it during the pushing, but in the moment when she said it, I I felt like everything drained out of my body like yeah. I am so tired. I'm so tired of having to hold this. It's like having to hold the posture. Like the constant sort of the rigidity of like constantly policing myself.

Carmina:

And I remember thinking about that saying like, you know, all the women in me are tired. And I think that it came back to that when we all kind of shared back. I think I guess it confirmed what I was thinking when you talked about, like, you know, issues with the ways in which your mother would express herself or lack of expression. But whether or not you express it doesn't mean you don't feel it. Right. So I felt that maybe you carry that without even meaning to. We all carry things that we don't mean to carry because we inherit pain and trauma and love and all these things that the women before us have carried.

[bubbling oceanic sound]

Meenadchi:

For any like, any work that we're trying to do with collective experience, with witness and with knowing your body to be able to discern what is rage and what is grief, because if we confuse the two, we don't actually attend to what needs to be attended to. I guess grief just feels like big fucking open water. [Ocean sound of waves moving in and out gently] And then rage feels really clear. It feels very direct. It feels like a boundary. It also feels like, you know, when it is acknowledged, when it is really heard, listened to, attended to, it can dissipate immediately. It doesn't have a need to hold on and stay in the body.

NK:

On a neurophysiological level, each time we practice having the beneficial experience, we're pulling engagement away from our brains trauma response center and bringing engagement to other areas of our brain, specifically to our prefrontal cortex, where we can integrate the new experience and neuroplastic change can occur.

Meenadchi tells us that trauma isn't always a big event like rape or abuse or other kinds of physical violence.

Meenadchi:

Like even the framework that we use right is really ableist colonial sort of framework, the idea that I'm supposed to be able to live by myself.

NK:

There's also trauma anytime we don't experience belonging or feeling safe in a group.

Meenadchi:

The idea that I'm supposed to be able to survive in a context where I'm not loved and celebrated.

NK:

In fight or flight, your inner ear shifts to hear the lower frequencies of predators. Which means that today in a contemporary setting, we may not hear the higher tones and the voices of the people we're speaking to, the tones that would reassure us that we're safe and wanted and not actually in danger of attack. The terrible asshole voice in my head once kept me safe, but now it's preventing me from fully living my life from experiencing connection with the people I most want to connect to. My public persona, the person I am in the world has been shaped by what was essentially a coping mechanism. [NK's brain voice: you're so fucking stupid. Everyone hates you, you're so fucking stupid] in Meenadchi's workshop we learn to confront our demons.

[NK's mean inner brain voice: You're a fucking asshole, you're a fucking bitch, everyone hates you, you're a douche bag]

To write down what they say.

[You're horrible]

[this is fine, this is fine, this is fine]

[Shut the fuck up. What are you doing. Shut the fuck up, What do you think you're doing.]

and to thank them for their service.

[Shut up. No, one want's to hear, you're stupid]

[it's fine.]

And then to tell them that we don't need them anymore.

[crackling fire sound or wind blowing]

NK:

That winter, I'm home for the holidays with my parents and my sister. My parents live near Nashville and in the days after Christmas, we drive four hours south through Memphis and across the state line into Alabama

[Rescue Me by Fontella Bass starts playing-the wind sounds like the air moving through a car's windows]

to visit a part of the south I've never been to: Birmingham, Selma and Montgomery.

[can't you see that I'm lonely, rescue me]

It turns out to be the closest I have ever felt to a homeland.

[Car navigation sounds of a woman's robot voice giving directions]

From Birmingham, we drive a few hours south.

[car window sounds-slight right onto Alabama 22 west]

to Selma.

[Sounds of people joking around in a car, what are you doing, you ruined it]

Where we walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where 600 voting rights activists began their march to Montgomery in honor and in protest of a Black man killed during a voter registration drive.

[sounds of rain falling]

It was raining in Montgomery when the marchers arrived from Selma and it's raining when we arrive, which seems fitting.

NK:

We visit a museum in downtown Montgomery that connects the condition of chattel slavery to the contemporary condition of mass incarceration. The Equal Justice Institute's Legacy Museum highlights the trauma of family separation and the shame and humiliation of Jim Crow, which was especially resonant for me since I was home researching my personal lineage of shame, trauma and grief. Historically, the first room of that museum was the room where people waited to be sold at auction. Just a few blocks away, the walls of the room are painted with accounts of mothers separated from their children, husbands separated from their wives and siblings ripped apart.

[When you take us out on the block — they want us to sell ourselves?]

One person describes the anguish of being separated from her family.

NK:

[reading quote from museum text] "Oh, such crying and weeping when parting from each other."

And then the punishment for showing this natural human affection, the lash. "The slave holder would apply the lash or paddle upon the naked skin."

I'm thinking about how for us, displays of vulnerability were forbidden and how showing that you care about something could put that thing at risk.

[film footage: Seems like I hear my daughter calling out for me, I, I can't find her. ]

Beyond this first room there's a corridor of motion activated holograms.

Voice of the hologram:

A little girl, a little boy.

NK:

The voices and stories of people who are looking for their families. In the days before this trip, I was reading a book on epigenetics and preparing to interview my mom, to ask her questions about her childhood and mine.

Voice of the hologram:

[A high pitched voice singing emotionally] I can't see my children.

NK:

But, I haven't done the interview. I've been putting it off. We've never really been close or comfortable expressing affection or opening up to each other. And I sense she had the same relationship with her own mother.

Voice of the hologram:

I can hear, I can feel, I think I can hear them, but I just can't see them.

NK:

In the museum, I watched my mom and wonder what she's thinking, how she's feeling. But I felt that it was important not to disrupt whatever defense system she had built up over the years, the ways she had learned to protect herself from the impact of these images. These stories, this history, our history.

NK:

When we got back to my parents house in Tennessee, I went down into my parents basement and started looking through boxes of old photos. I was looking for photos that would remind me of Georgia, remind me of my younger self, younger versions of my parents, my grandparents. And I find a photo of myself from my High School prom in the photo, I'm standing alone without a date in the parking lot of my High School in a vintage lace dress in heels and a dark red lipstick. And I just kind of hold this photo and just stare at it and, like, examine every detail of the photo. Like, I'm really interested in what's conveyed by my expression. I'm really interested in the expression on the faces of the two girls pointing at me in the background, you know, sort of like there's this kind of arc of attention around me that I don't think I was aware of at the time. I definitely wasn't aware of it. It's like a record of this disconnect, like knowing exactly how I felt about myself at the time the photo was taken, knowing how I saw myself versus how other people see me. I felt a lot like now, like how I see myself. The narrative that's going on inside my mind that is so different from what's actually happening. And right then I made a promise to myself that I would end that disconnect, that I would stop seeing myself through this, this distorted lens that white supremacy and misogynoir had given me.

[rain drops falling softly]

NK:

I fell asleep that night to the sound of rain, and in the morning I woke up crying. It was the last day of the year, my last day at my parents house before flying back to Los Angeles. And throughout the day, I'm just weeping. There is this overwhelming feeling that there is a self that I have to leave here, a self that I have to leave behind, leave here in this year, leave here in this house, just leave in the past.

It's like I can't go back to California. I can't, like, live another year. I have plans to spend New Year's Eve with my sister. Our parents drop us off at a hotel in Nashville an hour from where they live. And as I climb out of my dad's truck, I'm just unable to stop crying. My mom looks at me with concern, but she smiles and she tells me that even though we didn't get to do the interview, that she'll call me that she'll answer my questions over the phone. I'm grateful, as the day turns into night I'm kind of overwhelmed with this feeling that gradually I come to understand, is grief.

My sister leads us in a ritual, a cleansing with a glass of water, some table salt and a lemon.

[introspective music quietly plays]

We write down everything we want to release on pieces of paper. We fold them up and gather them into a drinking glass, sprinkle them with the lemon water

[sound of a match lighting-]

and set them on fire.

[music fades out]

Kaitlin Prest:

This episode was written and produced by Nicole Kelly, Chequita Paschal edited this series. In this episode, you heard excerpts from It Didn't Start with you, How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle. By Mark Wollyn. Many thanks to Meenadchi, whose Decolonizing Nonviolent Communication Workshop was the impetus for this series. Many, many people helped make this series into what you heard. We are so grateful. You know who you are. Thank you to all the people who have ever worked on this show from 2008 all the way until now, especially my original business partner and the original senior producer, Mitra Kaboli. If you want to reach out to NK about this work and how it made you feel or the ways that you related. Follow us on Instagram at the heart radio or write to the heart at Mermaid Palace dot org.

NK:

Okay, so I was standing outside this place called the Rage Room in Downtown LA. um, I guess I'm about to go smash the shit out of some bottles and well, I got the package that comes with one large object. Not really sure what that's gonna be, but I want to make sure there is something substantial to rage against. This is like another thing I've been putting off. I've been knowing I wanted to follow up the workshop with some kind of like intense, loud, aggressive, physical, full body expression of rage and haven't really known exactly how to do that. I've been looking for different things to do. I don't know, I. I've been putting it off because I wasn't sure if it was like I wanted to do it, but didn't want to do it. Or like, I couldn't imagine I couldn't really imagine myself, um, really going for it and so I'm going to go in and see what the deal is.

NK:

[outdoor street sounds] Can I ask you a favor? Can you — I'm just making I got a little radio story about rage. What's your name?

Kimber:

My name is Kimber, hi.

NK:

[Laughs] Have we met before?

NK:

The music in here sucks. This is not really what I had imagined I'd be listening to. I was like, can you pipe jagged little pill into the room? [laughs] Okay. Yeah, whatever this works, it takes me back to 9th grade. I can work with it. There are a bunch of like lead pipes in here. The large object is a printer. So I'm going to have a little office space moment.