Our collective inheritance: Claiming white kin and the other side of righteousness
On elections, bodies, the vagus nerve, and what comes next
The last thing I want to do is write another think piece full of blame or advice. This is an edited version of a letter I wrote to the Embodied Ancestral Inquiry alumni on the day of Trump’s election to a second term. May we all find the people and communities with whom we can share deep purpose, reciprocity, and kinship in times of great fear and unravelling.
Protoplasm is one of the simplest and most prevalent components of life; a colourless fluid that contains the living part of a cell, it is present in all plant and animal matter. Protoplasm is always in motion; a constant streaming and pulsation that only halts when it is frozen or anaesthetized in a lab. When this happens the protoplasm doesn’t necessarily die, it simply freezes in place like a kind of hibernation or living death.
The Wound is the Way
Whiteness is a tradeoff; humanity and interconnection for material resources and power —but with a gaping void at the centre that can never be satiated. What has to have happened to a people for them to make such a trade?
So much of the experience of whiteness that we are unravelling from together lies in understanding domination as a survival response; an adaptation to trauma, violence, and profound powerlessness. We see this kind of shaping in cycles of abuse all around us, but what makes it so devastating and pervasive in this case are the structures and systems that uplift, defend, and perpetuate it.
I imagine amongst the many feelings swirling around for all of us, but especially for our kin in the US, a kind of paradox around being both implicated in the harms of empire while also being a target of those harms. We are all caught up in this double bind to varying degrees as white people, and our wrestling with it is what brings us together in this community.
When I think of what it would take for a person to feel the kind of hatred for difference and vulnerability that we are witnessing, to become so cut off from their own aliveness and interdependence with their fellow kin — the very way that life itself is organized (hello, protoplasm) I am confronted with some very uncomfortable truths. But then I think about the protoplasm, how it learns to still itself, a kind of living death, to survive conditions that would otherwise destroy it. We mammals do the same.
As we are learning and sensing into together, whiteness is a kind of living death which was sometimes chosen consciously by our ancestors, but I’m beginning to believe was more often adopted under coercion. People don’t choose to disconnect from life, they do so when there is no other choice. This living death is the open wound we are seeing pour out all around us, and which has been left unattended for a long, long time.
I’m nudging us towards this question: What has to have happened to a people for them to trade interdependence for control? The answers that emerge for each of us are information about where healing is needed.
I come from these people. I have felt that cold stilling and hardening off in my recent ancestors. When I started learning their stories the judgement and righteousness I carried towards them when they were alive fell away, and a deep grief and understanding softened in me. Softening isn’t about excusing or condoning harm done, it’s about trying to understand how things got to be this way, so we can more effectively change our conditions. As my mom (a seasoned trauma therapist) often likes to remind me: “it’s an explanation, not an excuse”.
I think about our people whose lives have pushed their bodies to freeze that streaming aliveness in place, or for whom there was perhaps very little aliveness to begin with. People for whom the very suggestion of thawing out and returning to interdependence is so threatening as to ignite a fury of violence and rage towards anyone whose existence reminds them of their own vulnerability.
Barbara Holifield offers one of the most poignant descriptions of this intergenerational trauma response in her essay Psyche Within the Matrix of the Natural World: Weaving Inner and Outer:
“An individual in .. a highly activated state of archetypal affect…, needs to be emotionally met by a resonant other, for that state to be transformed into the realm of feelings that can be reflected on and brought into relationship, rather than murderously acted out, on others. If this does not occur, archetypal defences aimed against having to feel the pain that is more than the person can otherwise bear are mobilized in an effort to protect the traumatized self…
These formidable defenses obstruct access to genuine feelings, severing connection to self, others and from a sense of belonging to the natural order of things.
Often rooted in long legacies of individual as well as transgenerational trauma, these protective mechanisms become self-perpetuating, locking one into a survival strategy that unconsciously ensures that one will never again have to bear feelings which engender an inner sense of vulnerability.”
Culture, Connection and Control
According to the Polyvagal Theory, the ventral-vagal pathway of the mammalian nervous system is activated when our bodies feel safe and connected, allowing us to be present, curious, and socially engaged. There is a lot of talk about co-regulation and belonging and how polyvagal theory offers a science-backed reminder that we are inherently relational creatures. However, it is not an inherently morally “good” thing to be in a ventral state.
The ventral-vagal circuit can be recruited in circumstances of conditional belonging (like cults and far-right orgs) as long as there is compliance with the conditions/ beliefs that guard entry to the group. The expansive and heart opening experiences so many of us seek through community and connection? This is what many Trump supporters are experiencing. We share the same neurobiology, the same urge towards connection — what makes the difference is the kind of cultures we choose to build (and have access to).
When the conditions are conditional and transactional, and we lack the trust and safety of true belonging, we become focused on holding power and control so we can belong, rather than dismantling it. How many of us can relate to this? How different is this from so many of our organizations on the left?
What if we still got to belong when we didn’t comply? What if there were boundaries and practices around addressing harm that didn’t lead to expulsion and isolation? Belonging to the land, to each other, to spirit, this is our birthright. Whiteness is an adaptation to a reality in which belonging and interdependence have been all but annihilated. If we want to end domination and de-assimilate from whiteness, we must learn to create cultures of belonging, to be abolitionists in an ancestral sense — to remember the old ways that tether us to a belonging so fierce and unshakable that we fall back into the folds of life, including our kin who have become lost and full of hatred.
This election outcome is not a surprise for many of you I imagine. It will mean a deepening into purpose and the commitments you have already made. I suppose I am reaching for you here, and telling you about the vagus nerve once again, because my longing in this moment is that we don't turn away from each other, even from our "bad kin". I want for us to protect our most vulnerable beloveds, while also attuning to the common pain and inheritance we carry with those who are inflicting this harm. This is generational work, to remember a different way — and we cannot do it alone. I hope you are all surrounded by circles of love and support where you can reach out and be encircled by belonging in all your mess and imperfection.
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again.”
— Maya Angelou
“Two or three things I know for sure and one of them is that telling the story all the way through is an act of love.”
— Dorothy Allison
Upcoming Offerings with wildbody:
Save the Date: Anatomy of the Void: Whiteness, Belonging, and the Roots of Domination An Embodied Ancestral Inquiry Introductory Workshop
Part 1: January 31st, 2025
Part 2: February 7th, 2t025
9am-1pm PST / 12-4pm EST
Online
~ More info and registration coming soon~
ReSound: Acoustic Healing with the Safe and Sound Protocol
A 12-week healing journey bridging transpersonal psychology with neuroscience, sound, and relational somatics — Winter 2025 Cohorts Begin January 21st
Learn More
SSP Mentorship Circles —A monthly mentorship group for SSP providers to deepen somatic awareness, nervous system attunement, and therapeutic effectiveness.
December 6th, 2024 12pm-2pm EST — Titration, Pacing and Facilitating the SSP in groups
January 10th, 12pm-2pm EST — Tracking activation and deactivation cycles in the nervous system
February 7th, 12pm-2pm EST — Integrating earth-based spirituality and the SSP
Learn More