Beyond trauma and despair: Searching ancestors’ testimonies for keys to intergenerational Black healing and well-being

Conceptual models of historical trauma acknowledge that resilience and protective factors play a role in mitigating the effects of historical trauma on affected populations. Magnifying the resilience and protective factors that helped people of African ancestry resist and survive the historical trauma of enslavement creates an opportunity to build connections to the African American heritage of healing and strength in the face of racism and oppression.

A study by Henderson and colleaguesopens in new window published in American Journal of Orthopsychiatry looks at healing as part of a comprehensive discussion of the intergenerational impact of historical trauma. This work is built on the authors’ collective cultural understanding that the African American story does not consist solely of historical trauma, pain, and suffering but is replete with evidence of survival, strength, and resistance. The authors used frameworks provided by Indigenous scholars on the power of cultural healing to investigate the ways in which this strength was evidenced within historical documents detailing the narratives of enslaved Africans and African Americans.

Henderson and colleagues analyzed qualitative data from a historical text that examined healing culture among people of African ancestry who were enslaved in the United States on Southern plantations. Their analysis of the healing practices, strategies, and roles presented in the text revealed that seeking guidance from cultural wisdom and healers was essential to figuring out how to heal. Also, cultural healing knowledge and roles were often activated to resist, fight back, and create conditions for healing and well-being. These themes were commonly associated with how healers and seekers of healing used the strategies evidenced in the data.

Further, Henderson and colleagues’ analysis highlighted social and spiritual pathways for preserving these healing strategies and for facilitating healing in previous and subsequent generations. Specifically, people of African ancestry who were enslaved on Southern plantations indicated that their ability to experience and perform healing practices was connected to (a) being directly taught cultural healing traditions, (b) internalizing and applying practices that they observed other family and community members perform, (c) activating healing gifts and abilities that they were born with, and (d) engaging and putting into practice healing wisdom that was shared with them by spiritual entities and ancestors.

Finally, the expression of healing via cultural healing roles, traditions, and philosophies and the transference of these healing practices and outcomes were considered by the authors to be evidence of an intergenerational transmission of healing and well-being that needs to be documented as an essential part of the discourse on historical trauma.

Overall, the analysis reinforces the importance of cultural healers and healing practices in buffering the effects of historical trauma for African Americans across generations. Initiatives that aim to address trauma in Black communities should be designed with an awareness of how healing has been historically cultivated. Ethical and inclusive health care practices should center on, respect, honor, and acknowledge the cultural wisdom, practices, and roles associated with Black healing traditions. Practitioners and educators should also share the current model as a restorative and empowering counternarrative to historical and ongoing depictions of Black powerlessness and despair.

Note: This article is in the Clinical Psychology topic area. View more articles in the Clinical Psychology topic area.

Henderson, Z. R., Stephens, T. N., Ortega-Williams, A., & Walton, Q. L. (2021). Conceptualizing healing through the African American experience of historical trauma. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 91(6), 763–775. https://doi.org/10.1037/ort0000578opens in new window

Zuleka R. Henderson, PhD, LMSW, is the founding director of the Center for Black WellBeing (CBW) at graymatters medical practice, an organization reimagining mental health service delivery for Black people. She was previously a lecturer at the Columbia University School of Social Work, where her research and scholarship focused on the intersections of ancestral healing practices, trauma, and pathways to wellness. Inspired by her commitment to intergenerational healing and well-being for people of African ancestry, she translated insights from her research, practice, and personal experiences into the development of CBW, a healing-centered, culturally rooted, collective practice that works with individuals, communities, and organizations to create and sustain the conditions that support wellness for all Black people.

Tricia N. Stephens, PhD, LCSW-R, is a social work practitioner, researcher, and educator based in New York City at Hunter College. She uses historical trauma and cultural healing frameworks to inform her teaching, research, and direct practice with people of the African diaspora and child-welfare-affected families of color in New York City. Her work is dedicated to highlighting the ways in which modern institutions continue to feed the centuries-long American appetite for family separation and to elevate within-family and community strengths that support stability for Black and Brown families.

Anna Ortega-Williams, PhD, LMSW, is a social worker, public scholar, researcher, educator, and organizer inspired by the healing alchemy of social action as youth development among Black youth. As an assistant professor at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, she focuses on historical trauma, posttraumatic growth, organizing, and well-being. Her work is informed by her experience of growing up in public housing in the Bronx, as well as by her commitments to joy, healing, imagination, and transforming the world.

Quenette L. Walton, PhD, LCSW, is a practitioner, educator, scholar, and researcher. She uses qualitative methods and intersectionality to intentionally situate the lived experiences of middle-class Black women who experience depression to develop culturally relevant and sustainable interventions that support their journey toward wellness and healing. Currently, she is an assistant professor at the University of Houston, in Houston, Texas.