Legacy Trauma

I have tried to write this story so many times, yet every time I sit down to write, the words disappear. Please stay with me as I stumble over myself. I turned 45 this year, in April, (Aries yay!) and what I am experiencing is nothing short of a mid life crisis. I know what you are thinking, did she travel to Jamaica and try to get her groove back? No. Shiny new drop top Mercedes that smells of vanilla and exotic lilac like what I imagine the inside of Khloe Kardashians house smells like? No. I hit bottom. I ruined and sabotaged all of my relationships, my clients stopped hiring me, I spent a month in Atlanta crying and buying healing crystals in Little Five Points because I was burnt out being a woman and a professional photographer, I didn’t know what to do with my life and I was scared.

All I could ever really imagine being is a photographer. I taught myself lighting and f-stops, creating my own style that can be seen all over the world. I came from a really hard place, put myself through college, started my photography business and thought  life was getting better than the hand that was dealt to me at birth. But what no one will tell you is that you can be successful, drag your own ass to the top of your game, and inside you will be crying out for the mom you never had and yearning for a place that feels like home because you never felt what it was like to feel safe. Most of us were feeling homesick, at home. 

I remember as a kid, being able to sit with pain and sadness more easily than happiness. Being abandoned when you are a baby will put your little body in a survivor, auto-pilot, fight or flight waiting for shit to go down, type of response. When I started my healing journey I counted nineteen houses that I have lived in because of constant moving around when I was a kid. There. Was. Trauma. I will never say that there were not good times. There was. The first thing I want you to recognize is that when you are living in trauma, pain and unsure of where you will live, there will be happy times, but you may not feel the emotion, you just know that you should be feeling it at that moment. 

My grandma protected my emotions with Little Debbies, candy, snacks and pop. She introduced me to religion that taught me to feel guilty about simply existing while in a home that has food, when there were starving kids all over the world. I was taught to not feel. Don’t talk about it. Don’t acknowledge it. Pray to God about it and feel guilty. Eat the donuts after service to mask life’s pains. The self harm was real. 

I have gotten a lot of shit from my family, mostly the ones who are not actually in our lives, but watch from afar, for writing and being public about my life. I am guessing partially because I write here and there about the people that contributed to my pain. They said it was embarrassing and that I should keep those things only between family. But what I know is that the trauma that Little Brooke felt was carried through my tiny body, and because I couldn't heal myself before I had my first baby at 16, I passed my trauma, pain and habits onto my kids. I also know that my mom carried that pain when she was pregnant with me and my grandma when she was pregnant with my mom. Studies actually show that what I call “legacy” trauma can be passed through DNA and I decided to be the one to heal it as much as I can while I am on this planet so that my kids and my grandbabies can identify with happiness more than pain. 

Legacy trauma is sneaky. Sometimes it looks like part of a culture. For example, I was taught that in Catholicism, you don’t leave or divorce your husband under any circumstances. The culture I was born into wanted my grandma and my aunties to stay with abusive husbands or they would be banished to hell. To HELL. So, we have Little Brooke, seeing abuse, cheating husbands, alcoholic husbands, absent husbands, and their obedient wives staying with their husbands because of the word of god. I know it is more complicated than this, my college thesis was on domestic violence. But being raised Catholic and many other religions, which is a huge part of culture, and the secrets they hold in the rules they create for control is absolutely passed down as “legacy” trauma. But, hail Mary, the lord is with thee. I wish I could have instead learned about Lilith every Wednesday and Sunday instead of purgatory and the devil. 

When I was 15 I met my kids' dad. Charming, smart, funny, abusive. I thought he was the answer to my prayers, someone to take me away from the pain, finally someone who wanted me. My teenage self, and all of her pain, put her heart and love that she didn’t yet have for herself into a man that after 3 kids and 8 years, tried to kill her. I stayed with a man that played the perfect role in my own self harm. Having kids when you are a teenager is self harm, a distraction from childhood and legacy trauma. Staying with an abusive man, one that would rather kill you than see you with anyone else is also self harm. Having babies at a young age and being abused mentally, verbally, emotionally and physically was my way of blaming someone else for the pain I already felt, even before we met. He confirmed my feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. I chose to be with someone that would abandon me the same way my family did. It was a perfect match. 
I left that relationship when my youngest daughter was one. I knew there was a possibility that my babies would end up without a mom or a dad if I stayed with him. The legacy trauma that was passed to me through experience, DNA and religion taught me to stay with him, while my family began to disown me for the same thing they taught me to be, obedient, guilty, and a woman who is loyal to god and her man. The mindfuck. 

So there I was, 2 years ago, in Atlanta, wondering what the fuck to do with my life. Nothing was going right, and the most important thing to a Pisces stellium, is relationships, and they were all bad. The only creative outlet I had focused on was photography and my clients controlled that. It’s tough to be a creative and always be told what to do, how to shoot, restrict how much a woman can make, and then take it all away when you are no longer convenient and passive. If I knew then what I know now, maybe I would have played the mediocre white man game of having so much audacity and delusion that I think I can swoon people with my presence and commanding arrogance. But, I didn’t. I people pleased and did too much for too little and as I started to heal myself I learned to have boundaries. Boundaries don’t sit well with people that are used to getting their way. 

Growing up with unavailable parents will set you up for failure. I wanted to belong. I tried to fit into places that were toxic and were not meant for me. I thought I had goals and dreams, and that I had to bite my tongue in tough situations like conversations within my relationships. From partners, to my kids, to clients, I did not have boundaries for myself, I let people walk over me, and then I exploded. I was not taught to love myself and to have conversations and not take them personally. No one instilled in me that I could say no before I was at the brink of complete exhaustion. 

I watched my grandma and other women in my family work their asses off for what they have. Never saying no. Again, my culture has a lot to do with it, and so does our societal norms, but we have to do better at healing ourselves and supporting women so that we don’t hit 45 and not realize that our goals are not only the billboard in Atlanta or shooting for Target as much as it is to heal ourselves so that we can feel fulfilled in all things that we do. But we have to learn how to heal. 

My dream is that women learn the skills to heal, so that they know themselves and then they can set and reach the biggest goals they can possibly imagine. I created vision board after vision board and I did achieve many things, but had I healed myself first, I would have been able to keep professional relationships about work, I wouldn't have taken so many things personal and I would have set the boundaries that Little Brooke needed so that she didn’t get hurt. What good is achieving a goal if you can’t feel proud of yourself? What does it even mean, and what is life, if you can only really identify with pain?

This went on until May of 2023, when we sold my childhood home. This triggered me into waking up with nightmares, screaming at the top of my lungs. The same house that I never felt at home in, was now the catalyst for my healing. I had to face abandonment, grieve being in this world with the parents I was given and not the parents that I needed. I had to go back to painful things that happened in that house so that I could heal and move on. I can’t say that we heal every part of us when we do our work, but selling my grandma’s house forced me to look back at what was there the whole time, that needed me, needed love and needed me to rescue her, Little Brooke. 

So I did. I have been through therapy throughout the years, I did DBT three times, and last year I started EMDR. I went back to those painful moments and I became Little Brooke’s hero. I met a mentor who challenges me and has taught me so much about the mind/body connection. My nutrition became a focus. I became more intentional about what I eat so that my brain and my body have the nutrients to process old repressed and suppressed emotions. 

During the six months I stepped away from everything to learn to heal, I was minimally shooting, I focused on myself, my journey and my healing. I started Dame Culture Studios, where I coach women one on one and in groups working together to heal their trauma. I also host workshops for women and create a safe space for them to be vulnerable and practice mindfulness, while learning about the mind/body connection. I started to change. I began to feel happiness and to trust. 

Dame had its first anniversary on September 5th. I get to coach and teach women about the parts of themselves that they don't want to see so that they can heal.  I still do photography, but with really clear boundaries and expectations, and I am falling back in love with it. I learned to be in relationship with my partner, and to lean into curiosity and compassion. I am around my mom more than ever and I like listening to her stories, even the ones that shaped who I am, because I can now see her as a human being. 

If you are still here to read about how I changed my life, thank you. I am going to be as honest as I can, curse words included and share with you how abandonment, trauma, religion, being a teen parent, abusive relationships and self harm showed up in my life and how I began to manage it all and the emotions that come up. I learned to heal so that you can start to heal too. My daughters and my son and my grandbabies are watching me, and I am putting an end to the legacy trauma that was handed to me. I am being more mindful, more patient, more vulnerable. I am able to feel happiness. 

If you are a woman, who has experienced legacy trauma and things just are not working out the way you wish they were, let’s talk. Maybe you don’t even know what your goals are because it's too painful to think ahead. You came across this message and these stories and read it to the end for a reason. You can heal, you can feel your feelings, you can express them and you can develop relationships that thrive. I want you to feel happiness when you get to the top. I want to help you heal.  I believe in you.