Hi, it's Kadija.

In this episode, we're going to explore what it's like to be in a community healing and the aftermathter trauma.

We'll talk about our hosts for the future and show how sisterhood can get us through the darkest moments of our lives.

But that conversation will include discussions of suicide, murder, substance abuse, and sexual assault.

This series is here to offer tools and support to victims and their loved ones, but please do keep in mind that we are not mental health professionals.

We would always encourage you to seek out professional mental health support if you are struggling with the issues we are discussing today.

If you or someone you love have been affected by any of the themes that come up in this episode, we've left the links in the description that offer resources and support, take care of yourself.

In this episode, we're talking about recovering from trauma, whether you're seeking help for yourself or a loved one.

This episode is about sharing the twos to move forward and how you can help those around you.

In this series, we've shared some of the darkest stories of our lives, violence, police brutality, and a corrupt justice system.

Have all contributed to the trauma crisis in the city.

We love Kansas City, Kansas, but the pain runs deeper.

We still live with the legacy of Jim Crow.

The past cast a long shadow.

Something I've learned over the years is that if you don't work through your trauma, it can consume and destroy you.

But the girlfriends we met on this journey have never stopped fighting, fighting to heal, and fighting for justice.

There have been inspiring women activists who have shown us the way, like Bill Hooks, whose story reminds us healing is an act of resistance.

Now we're taking on that mantle and inviting you to join us.

I'm Kadida Heartaway from the Teens, a novel, and iHeart podcasts.

You're listening to the Girlfriends Untouchable by Honest episode too, the Girlfriend's Guide to Healing in the Aftermath of Trauma.

I want to start this conversation off with the reasons why it's so hard to begin healing a lot of women who are traumatized don't have the twos to recover.

This is something that we've witnessed all too much in our work at Justice for Wyandotte, and it's something me and my girlfriend on this journey, Nicki Richardson have discussed countless times.

Nicki, you know, we came together on this kind of like as a spark, right to just glided together.

That's exactly how it happened.

We started out the idea that Wyandot County needed therapy because that's what the crimes happened.

By the time of his death in December twenty twenty four, there had been two convictions tied to Detective Roger Galuspi which had been overturned, and as we're recording this, one hundred and fifty five more cases are under review by the Kansas City, Kansas Police Department.

A twenty twenty three civil lawso claims Galusi ran a such trafficking ring while on duty, raping and coercing women.

He was specific in who went after two.

Glusy's victims were overwhelmingly Black girls and women.

Many black women in Windock County continue to live in fear, and decades of abuse still leaves a mark on the collected lives of our community.

Black residents are almost three times more likely to be arrested for low level offenses than white residents in Windock County.

Additionally, black youth are three times more likely to be arrested than white youth, with revictimization a constant threat for so many of the women in Windock County.

Healing from past trauma is, to put it bluntly, really hard.

When you've had years and years and years of being exploited, being overlooked, to nobody hearing your story.

On top of these systems in place that are supposed to be built to protect you and just not doing it, the trust breaks down.

We've seen people who have resorted to substance abuse, even if they gotten better, and then they get triggered and they go right back into it.

What we noticed when we were trying to help people find their pathway to healing and finding their pathway to justice was that there were a lot of obstacles to just getting there.

So first was just simply recognizing that you have you have a problem, and that these responses are tied to your trauma.

So accepting treatment is a big part of accepting that you have a problem.

Trauma has them in such a space to where they can't get out of bed in the morning, they can't even set up the appointment, they can't function and so that is an uphill battle.

The trauma leads to disease.

Yeah, I mean your blood pressure is high, you're not sleeping well, yeah, you're not sleeping well, you're in a constant state of stress.

Your body just starts breaking down.

When it really comes to individuals that we advocate for, I think being consistent in what we tell them helps things resonate to a point where I can accept what I've been through.

People don't want to come out of victim into survivor because you no longer have any excuses why you can't change some of the things you want or why you can't move towards And I'm not saying.

That losing something too, you feel like you're losing the right to help.

The barriers that black women can face to helen are many.

The issues that get in the way range from denial to depression to continue in trauma, and as Nikki just said, people can become attached to the sympathy that comes with victimhood.

Even if a person gets to the point where they overcome those hurdles and they come to us for help, there are so many more challenges beyond Okay, you've accepted.

And you want it and you're ready for it.

Now we are running around trying to find the resources because the uniqueness.

And how we're set.

Up and how we're set up.

First of all, it needs to be paid for.

They're not going to usually in a space to be able to afford their own therapy, and then care sociality care associated with and then therapy availability.

There's just not a lot of therapists that are readily available to deal with these immediate triod situations.

And even though when we tried to build networks, it's still a tough battle.

We wanted to make sure that we had a place where they could feel safe, and so also finding black women in therapy, you know, when you're getting that niche, it makes it limited to the amount of resources that you had.

So one of the problems that we ran into is just the emergency triage.

In one situation, we had a murder victim whose girlfriend was feeling suicidal.

We went into trying to find someone to help the young lady.

What we ran into was roadblocks everywhere.

The bands were full.

In some points, we were building a strategy with the people on the phone as if we were therapists ourselves, and we just couldn't get the people help.

In many cases, they would do that same thing with us being a therapist.

Well, you're capable can this particular situation.

I'm like, no, they're dealing with trauma and they need actual resources.

Right, There's definitely enough resources out there.

There's no reason why these women should have to ask for anything.

There were no resources for these women, nothing for them to keep themselves up above water, right, sustain themselves.

And we're talking about in the areas of therapy, legal representation, because it was hard for them to just keep a job or occupation which nobody does its work, and to keep without having some kind of like strife amongst themselves right, Which for me when I talk about trauma, of course, I've had run ins with the police and have dealt with some issues with family that I just never really got any help with.

Running our non for profit, we have worked with many women who are trying to get that help and move forward with their lives.

One of the things we realize is, in the context of there being so much hurt around us, we had to protect ourselves first and look out for each other.

It has generally been through this process that I've understood what sisterhood means, and not in just the most beautiful and positive sense, but when it's hard and when it's difficult, and how to love each other even in those tough moments when you're going through trauma and grief and you're able to look at each other and be able to see each other and wipe each other's tears.

That's what real sisterhood is.

We find ourselves in these situations where we're trying to balance people's trauma keep them at an even keel.

Balancing that, Nikki, I think was probably one of the most hardest things.

I don't think if I had not had you, if I could not lean on you to tell you what I was experiencing with each case and you help me set up healthy boundaries and even give them healthy boundaries to move forward, I don't think we would even be in this space.

Because you know, we're no good to anybody if we're not taken care of to just start establishing those boundaries.

I got a ton of calls, and it's just like, I'm not Jesus baby, I'm not Moses.

I can at all.

I don't know what you want me to do with all of this.

How do you set these boundaries that don't retraumatize yourself while you're trying to help other people.

This brings me to the sisterhood that we had to developed the protection of one another.

So what about the lessons we've learned and how we've come to function and heal in this difficult environment we've been in.

There's a lot of trauma here that's creating an entire barrier that makes it hard for even function to get their own justice.

You need to find something to root yourself in for your healing.

We're very much rooted in our faith, and I think that is what's kept us strong.

If you need a therapist to help you with that journey, seek therapy.

If you need a church family to find that journey, find a church family.

And it's okay if you can't move as fast as you want to move, if you need a second, take that second.

Get yourself together and get yourself in a place to where you can actually fight.

But that's the other thing about trauma and fear is that people don't seek out the knowledge that they really need to take the next steps.

For me, it was very healing and therapeutic, even though I don't have the justice at least I know the things that they were gased like me about the laws.

When I talk about my church life, most of the ministries of my church are psychiatrists, and I remember going through my own situations and having sessions with my pastor to get through and it was free of charge.

So I was grateful for that.

Not everybody has those channels, right Yeah.

Mine and Nikki's work focuses on getting women their justice, and although the trauma they experienced is something we deal with, it's not our professional expertise with justice were wind out.

We did what we could, but there were limits on how we could help when it comes to healing.

The problems in the community were massive, and with the challenges of getting these women better to be honest, at times, we were out of our depth.

So I decided to reach out to someone who could shed a light on the barriers we face when it comes to healing in the many ways to overcome them.

That's coming up after the break.

Maisha Hill is a dedicated activist and Arthur fighting to get black women into therapy and on their healing journeys.

Maysha is nice to meet you.

If you could just give us a little bit of background on you.

My background is just based rooted in my lived experience as a mental health activist, as a guide, as a writer, as someone who just shares the journey of life with many people.

I'm a former deacon and pastor.

I just preached occasionally.

Bayisha is also the founder of Brown's Sister Speak, a non for profit organization founded a decade ago offering mental health empowerment and peer support to women of color.

It grew to become a platform for women of color to support each other in their mental health and worse, to get black women access to therapy.

If anyone can share some light on some of the barriers women face recovering from trauma, it's going to be Mayesha.

A lot of my work is the intersection of oppression and liberation.

First begin with brown Sister Speak, and that was a project actually as part of my college course, to have black women talk more openly about their mental health.

We talk as women about the importance of taking care of our mental health, and that it just evolved over time to me wanting to make therapy accessible, so raising funds to pay for people to go to therapy, and twenty twenty we raised so many funds for Brown Sister Speak.

At the time, we were able to send like fifty people to therapy.

We even had open mental health circles called First Black Friday through the summer of twenty twenty to help Black folks really have a space to process.

We started a community care campaign specifically for black folks.

Do you think there is a space for healing in this time?

I mean like I feel like there's you got to heal, But at the same time, you got to figure out a strategy to beat everything that is going on right now.

We struggle before Trump got into office with with trauma and mental health.

So how do I navigate what's happening right now with what healing truly looks like?

And it's I remember when the ancestors would gather together either on a weekday or a weeknight, and they would come together and circle.

That's the kind of sacred community space where people sit together and talk our prey or take part in a ceremony in order to help one another to heal.

Peer support is one of the most overlooked mental health practices that that's actually communal to Africa.

So for me, healing in this environment, we may have to go underground, and we know how to survive what's coming because we've been here before, and so how do we heal forward?

I think it really looks like us talking circles and finding psychologists.

So there's the Association of Black Psychologists and also pulling together our money.

If we have a black therapist or black psychologists, we're paying for each other to have access to mental health services.

Even with peer support.

We have people who have been severely abused, treated like animals in dogs.

These are the traumas of Wine Dot County.

There are.

Stories that would make you throw up after listening and hearing the stories, and all of this is at the hands of someone who is supposed to protect them, allegedly.

And so when we talk about sitting around in a circle, what do we do for people like that who just can't get that out of their mind?

The only thing that makes the function is medication.

As someone who has similar deep traumas as you name and have been medicated, the things that help me bring me out of that darkness and off medication was community and people point into me.

Because we also can't do this by ourselves, which is why circle is so important.

And it's also embodiment and somatic practices.

So there's a yoga, there's movement, there's dance.

So much of that gets stolen from you when you are assaulted, when you are a victim, when someone's supposed to protect you and they cause harm to you.

So how do we help each other reclaim that?

And I think reclamation comes with a new circle of care, and that care is around food and nutrition.

I think it's going to take a whole community of care model to do that, to help people who have experienced that level of trauma to get back to a sense of reclaiming their own humanity.

What worked in my journey changing what we eat, what we put into our bodies.

It's going to take psycho therapy, which is one on one therapy or group therapy.

Does someone need medication and how do you help them wean off medication right?

And how do they get in their bodies.

I know it's possible to help people be rehumanized.

In as I listened to you, it sounds like and I like to use the word utopia.

Depending on the level of trauma, A circle's not going to just help.

I think the circle is where you relate to your peers.

You need more than a circle when you're having repetitive thoughts of suicide, you know you mean more than the circle when you're having nightmares about the trauma that happened to you.

I think the circles are a definitely part of one's recovery process, and also the severity of the trauma depends on how you would curate your wellness action plan.

They used to talk about that when I was in the mental health hospital, like you had to have a wellness recovery action plan before they let you go.

And that's language that I don't know if we're using even in our own community.

How do you know when you need more than a group?

And how do we help each other remind each other of that?

Which leads me to talk about generational trauma.

We once steed a program called Jim Crow two point zero and it was just basically like we never really left Jim Crow.

Do you not get where policing came from and where we are now and why it looks the way it looks like, I mean, come on, take the blinders off, right, So let's talk a little bit about black trauma and how we have I guess PTSD.

One of the books that I really appreciate reading is doctor Joy de Grew, and she talks about post traumatic slave syndrome, and it basically comes from how a lot of our trauma is rooted and from being enslaved, and how we don't speak up right, We kind of sit and watch idly by out of fear.

I did want to touch a little bit more like on this whole Jim Crow synopsis, because it looks like we're going back that way we struggled before getting people in the right resources.

It makes me feel horrible to know that there are a lot of stories out here that I cannot help an individual because I don't have the resources.

It's hard to make those patterns because then you got to think about money.

Where's the money gonna come from?

So?

How can you change a sick environment when you're already in it.

The challenges Black people face around the nation are in the bones of our system and our history.

The environment is sick, and for many of the people in our community, we have turned that trauma in sickness and work blaming ourselves in each other.

Most people shy away from individuals who have experienced that deep mental trauma because they don't know what to do.

I remember the first time that I thought about they tell me I had depression, and I was like, that's white people's stuff.

Black people, we don't get depressed.

What is depression?

I can pray it away.

Every option that was offered to me, I just kept saying, no, only white people do that.

And I think the stigma is really rooted in that post traumatic slave syndrome of being resilient as a people, being a strong black woman, which is a stereotype, and not wanting to ask for help or support because you think you can hold it all together.

And I think over the last few years, I've slowly seen the stigma kind of slowly subside.

You know, we have therapy for black girls, we have therapy for black men, and I think given ourselves permission to say but I'm not okay and challenging every norm that says that you have to be.

Thank God, those stereotypes are fading.

So much of what Mayosha had to say resonates with me.

What we have been dealing with in Kansas City, Kansas isn't just a truly shocking case of injustice, but historic and economic issues as well, which deepened the challenges we as a community face for many, they never find their way to recovery.

With these individuals, we also need to show them love and understanding.

It's sad that they face so many obstacles to just living a normal life, the fycles of perpetuating the same thing over and over.

It's just interesting the compounding of this and how those cycles just don't seem to be able to be broken.

So if an.

Individual is really trying to get some help, how do they remove themselves from the environment that they know so well every day?

In order to.

Make that happen, I think to get out of that environment, we all have to consider choice, like what can I choose to do?

How do I what choices do I have?

My therapist had me do a genogram, which is basically this chart where you track all your generational behaviors and your whole bloodline and you're able to visually see where the trauma can start with you.

One day, I just woke up and said, I got to stop.

This has to stop with me.

I don't want my daughter to be a single mom.

I see eight generations of single parents.

It's hard to take control when your trauma has put you in the position of a victim and taking all your power away.

But we have to look for ways to confront our pain and move on.

For example, the geniogram maps out generational trauma over one hundred years.

This is a great way to show a victim that their pain won't go away if they ignore it.

Thevery wasn't a solution for Black people in the past.

People like ma Issua are working to make it more available, but it's.

Still not that accessible.

And days gone by the churches where people went for healing and support in a crisis.

I wanted to speak to Mayisha about how this cornerstone institution of the black community is walking with this flock and their journeys to healing.

After the break, We're going to look at the role the church can play and healing our wounds, where their limits are, and how to avoid retraumatizing yourself by sharing your stories.

I'm a Christian and an active member of my church.

The church has supported me and sustained me through rough times, but we have to be critical of the main institutions in our communities and push them to serve the flock better.

I've seen improvements come in the church, but it has a huge role to play and heal in the community.

So if it doesn't take that role seriously, it could end up doing more harm than good when it comes to mental health, particularly people in urban cores.

How do you feel like the church.

Do you think they help or do you think that they create more anguish.

I've seen church is that have a special fund in their church where their fund is just dedicated to mental health and supporting members who need mental health services in their church.

When the church partners with their local health department because their health department can actually send teams out to talk about mental health, that works.

Then I'm seeing churches that think that just laying the hands on somebody is gonna heal them.

So how would an individual set up some healthy boundaries when it comes to participating in what we call church healing.

I love what you're asking.

I think a person has to set their own boundaries and know that the church should not have power over them.

If I know that a pastor says to me, I'm gonna lay hands on you and heals you, is gonna retraumatize and retrigger me, because in the past that's never worked.

I need to write a letter to the deacon and elden board and say hey, it's a boundary for me.

Setting boundaries and understanding the limits of what can work for us on our healing journey is crucial.

Telling your story can be powerful, but too much of it can be triggering.

One of the key areas we focus on is ensuring the welfare of the women we advocate for at Justice for Wyandotte, I protected them from being exploited.

When it comes to participating in church healing, it's not the same.

And even in when you're sitting in a circle, there needs to be a healthy dose of what I can take and what I can't take.

We have a thing where you don't need to tell your story but once or twice, and that's it, because we believe telling your story over and over re traumatizes you.

People want help, they want relief, they want justice, and so they feel compelled to tell these stories.

But at the end of the day, it's tearing them apart.

And in most cases, these church leaders are at the forefront of the fight for justice.

How do we balance what the church can provide in those healthy boundaries.

For me, it would be explicitly knowing what my boundaries are in the church and excusing myself when those boundaries are gonna be crossed.

What is a boundary violation around my mental health?

How do we hold the church accountable?

Another thing, if you're in a circle and your circle doesn't have agreements of how y'all show up together, you're not in the right circle.

If you're in a circle and they're making you tell your story over and over again, that's not the right circle.

So when I lead circle, it's we're gonna write your story, We're gonna speak your story.

Then we're gonna rewrite a new story.

Circle should always be for me, empowering you not to live out that old story and rewriting a new one.

What I also learned was like having that faith in myself and the power of affirmation allowed me to take steps forward to want to heal on an even deeper level.

It empowered me to stop looking for someone to come and save me or rescue me.

It actually gave me the power to believe in myself and the higher power God or if maybe some people don't have that, but it allowed me to believe that healing growth was possible.

But it starts with me, and I have to take responsibility for that.

Even in the darkest circumstance.

As unfair is in my sound.

I agree with Maysha.

Ultimately, no one but you can start your healing journey.

You have to find the strength to affirm yourself.

When you do this, you'll find others stepping up to support you.

I think that Maysha's message is hopeful and it taps into something NICKI and I have believed in with our own work.

When a victim takes those bow steps towards healing and recovery, I imagine it would be useful to know the signs of progress, So I put that question to Mayusha when we talked.

For me, progress looks like setting goals with someone and then we usually do like one life goal.

I'll use a person who is married and is learning how to have goals for herself.

So she'll have a goal for her life and it go for her marriage, and over a ninety day period, we'll check in about the goal.

We'll talk about communication styles, we'll talk about how she's prioritizing herself in her marriage, and then how she's prioritizing her partner.

We'll just do a constant reporting and a check in, and usually within a ninety day period, I'm able to see people who are not able to set boundaries and not able to speak for themselves, set boundaries and start to speak for themselves.

There are some women that I've worked with for over five years that when you go back to who they used to be, which was very passive and feeling a sense of hopelessness, they're learning to find more joy in their life.

They're learning to have their own boundaries and then speak up when their boundaries are violated.

I recognize what Mayesha is saying in the healing journeys of the many women I.

Have been involved with.

We have to build up those resources of self respect, self worth, boundaries, and self love.

Once we've built we move to maintaining those elements.

Even something as simple as gardening can be a part of the healing process, and it's something that Mayesha encourages to.

My mom had a garden.

She love gardeners.

You name the flowers, name this, this is what this does, and this is how it's going to bear fruit in this time of the year.

And so I understand the importance of food from the ground.

Do you think the experience of like gardening and that bringing that into the fold of a circle where people actually touching the earth and touching each other.

Food relates to that.

How do we get people in a mindset that they understand that urban gardening and farming is an easy aspect and an easy economic way to get there.

When it comes to your health.

You are going to need to connect to the earth.

You may need meditation and yoga and breathwork.

You may need a nutrition is to help us get eat really good foods that will clear our minds.

You may need a holistic practitioner who can come in and tell you what vitamins and supplements to take.

You may need a movement specialist.

It's a whole community systems approach so that the community can move towards healing and possibility.

You have to empower yourself and then find the support that you need and ask for that help.

You don't have to do it by yourself.

I'm suggesting the circle and the food and the somatics and getting your hands in the dirt.

What I know from history is that those of us who stay in our imagination and dream and create, even in this system of dysfunction, healing is possible.

Healing is a lifelong journey You're never fully healed, you're always becoming.

Let's say your first trauma was at five years old and you've been living it with it, and now you're forty five.

You can't unlearn forty five years of trauma in like one year or two years.

It takes a constant practice because you have to reaffirm those behaviors, unlearn, and relearn.

And it is just a marathon, not a sprint, because your trauma will show up.

It's how you react and respond to it that makes the biggest difference.

I want to thank you for your insight and your contributions.

Thank you for sharing your wisdom and offering such powerful tools for understanding how we can start to heal.

Your work is truly a gift for this community.

My issue is a part of a generation of women who have given Black women more tools and more choices to get better.

This generation of women have been truly courageous and blazed to trail.

I hope you can take something from her wise words and this girlfriend's guy.

I wanted to touch on multiple paths for healing for you listeners.

I wanted you to know that there are so many roads to healing and ways to overcome.

While the pain is real, so is the possibility of healing.

Not every solution will work for everyone, but there are tools and help available.

Our communities have endorsed so much, but we also have the strength to heal and grow.

Let's take this journey together.

In the next episode of The Girlfriends Untouchable, Nikki will be diving into police misconduct and speaking to the executive director of the National Police Accountability Project to get some tips for how to know your rights and navigate interactions with the police.

Here's a sneak peek.

I don't think it's an option to say we just have to deal with this, we just have to give up.

People are suffering right now.

People are dealing with police violence right now, and I don't think it should happen to anybody else, and we should stand by them and stand with them.

The Girlfriend's Untouchable is produced by Novel for iHeart Podcast.

For more from Novel, visit novel dot Audio.

This episode was hosted by me Kadija Hardaway.

It was written and produced by Mohammed Ahmed.

The editor is Joe Wheeler.

The researcher is Zaiyana YUSA.

Production management from Sharie Houston and Joe Savage.

The fact checker is Vindo Fulton.

Sound design, mixing and scoring by Daniel Kinsen with additional engineering by Nicholas Alexander, Music supervision by Refriro Masurura, Nicholas Alexander and Joe Wheeler.

Original music by Amanda Jones.

The series artwork was designed by Christina Limku, Novels Director of Development in Selena Metta.

Willard Foxton is Novels Creative Director of Development.

Max O'Brien and Craig Strackton are executive producers.

For novel Kat and Nikki E.

Tour are the executive producers for iHeart Podcasts, and the marketing lead is Alison Cantour And a special thanks to Carly Frankel and the whole team at w ME