Jada Imani Carter shares about dealing with childhood trauma.
Author and social critic bell hooks once said that love and abuse cannot coexist. When I look back to my childhood and find abuse there, I find that although I may have been cared for, I was not loved. What I experienced in childhood was, for all I knew, a parenting style and a part of the culture and grew up in. It was not until I grew into my late teens that I realized my childhood was marked by hardships that are referred to as Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs for short.
I discovered that the higher my ACE score, the higher my risk was for prolonged, chronic stress responses, otherwise known as toxic stress. When I learned this, it made more sense why as a child I was always bracing, had nervous ticks, struggled to focus in school, developed a chemical dependency as early as seventh grade, and struggled to let people get close to me.
Childhood is like a blueprint for life and when your childhood home is not safe, the world feels like a particularly unsafe place. In my view, American culture is not built on love — but rather extraction, capitalism, labor, ambition and commerce. As an adult contending with a loveless albeit well-meaning childhood, I’m tasked with reparenting myself and building a new lifestyle.
I start with my little corner of the world by building community, creating art, and dedicating myself to passion-based work. In this journey, I have come to experience love and healing, though healing is not linear and I may always live with the residue of trauma.