I Am! Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks and Tony McDade
Introduction:
As a mental and spiritual health professional who provides psychotherapy daily for individuals from diverse populations, I listen to and hear the depth of pain and suffering my clients experience on a daily basis. Their pain and suffering are connected with trauma experiences from their personal narrative both historical and in the present moment. The recent social traumatic event in our country simply amplifies their individualized spoken and unspoken suffering in the clinical environment—a safe place to talk and to be heard and understood with compassion and empathy.
And then, we tragically and traumatically lost Mr. Ahmaud Arbery on Sunday February 23rd of this year; the police shooting death of Breonna Taylor on March 13th; then, May 25th and the officer Chauvin who knelt on Mr. George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and forty-six second: “I can’t breathe;” on May 27th, Tony McDade, a 38-year-old transgender man, was fatally shot and killed by police shooting; and, on June 12th in Atlanta, Rayshard Brooks shot and killed by another police officer. Not surprising we are just now seeing the video of the brutal and senseless killing of Ahmaud!
As an African American and black man, not only do these modern-day lynching and killing stimulate the existential anxieties about living today in a society and community where the covert and overt message is implied, ‘you don’t count; your life is of no intrinsic worth and value, it also stimulates the psychological traumas of the narrative that reside in un and/or subconscious of all people of color in this country. We are working to come up for some fresh air to breathe!
Existential Anxieties: A Clinical Experience
I have seven therapy groups with 6 to 8 members per group. Three are all African American women, two are mixed religiously, racially, men and women, heterosexual and homosexual; and, two are African American. The men groups, like the others, meet weekly or bi-monthly for one hour and twenty minutes. The men groups have been meeting for two years. Some brothers remain for a short period of time and others have remained to this day while new ones have entered. These men are well-educated and very successful in their professional lives. They are white-collar and blue-collar workers.
They are fathers, brothers, sons, uncles, married, single, divorced, gay and straight and range in age from mid-thirties to mid-fifties. A constant theme inevitably circles back around to is the overwhelming stress they feel in their bodies, particularly in their ‘guts and chests.’ There is constant pressure around daily thoughts about how they must exist and live as men in their ‘black’ bodies!
In some cases, they recount insidious demands in their places of employment, especially in corporate America structures, to prove their competence to their white co-workers. This is expressed more often during an annual review and a subjective evaluation usually from their white supervisor.
Concerned about their existence as human beings on a daily basis creates anxieties that live in their bodies. Their concern impacts everything from the functions of their essential organs to their inability to get a full night of sleep. These anxieties include symptoms of nervousness, insomnia, restlessness, fear, irregular bowel movements, worry, racing thoughts and loss of appetite to name a few. Just the other day in my neighborhood’s Nextdoor Post, a brother wrote: ‘I am black man and about to go for a run . . . don’t kill me.’ The concern for our existence as black men is a daily grind. This is our self-fact!
Psychological Trauma: A Story, May 2018.
I was attending a conference for the GA Marriage and Family Therapist Association on Jekyll Island; Glynn County is in the neighborhood of Jekyll Island. It was Friday afternoon, May 4, 2018. My wife and I decided to go for a swim at the beach. As we headed back to our room, I decided to swim a few laps in the pool. I was the only African American in sight. In the pool was a white family composed of a father and his young son and daughter. As I entered the pool, the father began to sing, “Marco Polo . . . it’s time for us to get out of the water children.” They exit the pool. Inside, I smiled and outside I pretended not to notice. I went about swimming my several laps.
Saturday afternoon, May 5, 2018, I decided to return to the beach for one final swim before leaving for dinner. As I entered the water—again the only black person in sight other than my wife—I noticed 3 white males about one-hundred yards away from me. They were playing with a beach ball (probably not paying me any attention) and having fun. Then the following sequence of thoughts raced through my mind. “Bernard, you better move further away just in case these white boys wan’na start some mess. . . man, relax and breathe . . . you’re always teaching others how to relax and breathe, now you do it. . . Stop looking over there at them, breathe and relax . . . I gon’na move twenty-five yards further away.” I moved and my mind kept racing with thoughts and my body could not relax—I was having an anxiety attack.
Next, I gave way to the anxiety. I got out of the water. I felt angry, defeated and sad. I felt like a fraud—I teach others how to relax in the moment through mindfulness breathing, and in the moment, I could not do it myself. I said nothing about this to my wife. I instead suffered in silence. I was more than ready to return home. When I returned home that Sunday, I went to sit in an infrared sauna for an hour and then received a massage for an hour. The following Friday, I would meet with colleagues where, again, I would be the lone African American. However, these are friends with friendly faces and compassionate and empathic hearts. We always check in to update the group regarding our well-being. Without hesitation or a second thought, I shared my experience. They wept. I wept. I felt relieved and still psychologically traumatized. There was a movement toward self-forgiveness by means of surrendering to my pain and suffering. Weeping!
Monthly, five of us African American friends and colleagues meet for fellowship and support. A few weeks after my experience at the pool and the beach, I shared the experience. They processed the experience with me, by means of openly and vulnerably sharing equally painful moments in their own lives. We, at the end of our 2-hour fellowship, sat in moments of silence. We ended our fellowship by hugging one another with masculine gentleness and feminine firmness, in other words, with strength and compassion. In this context, masculine gentleness refers to our ability to reflect logically and rationally as human beings who are capable of thinking intellectually through our individual narratives. Feminine firmness refers to our capacity to simultaneously experience our emotions and feelings by embracing our illogical and irrational selves openly and holding each other without touching each other. In the words of Howard Thurman, we were “completely vulnerable and completely secure!”
This hug from these black men offered me a deep sense of emotional stability, by transforming my earlier feelings of intimidation and fear, shame and guilt, anger and despair, helplessness and powerlessness into a newfound sense of personal affirmation, confidence, confirmation and restoration of my intrinsic worth and my sense of God-given dignity as a human being and a black man!
I have relived similar experiences of my early childhood during the 50’s and 60’s growing up in a small South Georgia town. I was familiar with the psychological encounters of intimidation, fear and segregation. For instance, we de-segregated our schools in 1969-1970 statewide. We had to leave our beloved community. We traveled by bus across the “railroad tracks.” A marker that divided where whites and blacks lived. Today, it’s called Redlining. Still again, for example, I would sit in class, knowing the answer to a question that my teacher would ask me and refuse to answer because I was thinking: “Bernard, don’t answer that question just in case you’re wrong, so that you don’t look dumb in front of these white folks.” My stomach would ache; my chest was tight, like I was holding my breath; and, my head dropped in shame!
A Healing Experience: Spiritual Transformation
“God of our weary tears, God of our silent tears, Thou who has brought us thus far on the way; Thou who has by Thy might Led us into the light, Keep us forever in the path, we pray. Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee, Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee, Shadowed beneath Thy hand, May we forever stand, True to our God, True to our native land.” Stanza 3 from Lift Every Voice and Sing written by James Weldon Johnson.
Last year I traveled to the native land, Ghana. My first trip to the continent. It was the Year of the Return, commemorating the 400 years (1619-2019) of our enslaved ancestors from the Motherland to the Americas, but in particular to North America. Without going into the whole 10-day journey, one part of my spiritual transformation took place while sitting on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, from Africa! In the photo below, I felt overwhelmed by the spiritual presence of the ancestors! The air, soil, and water gave me a new transcendent conscious awakening! HOME!
I noticed that the waters on this side of the Atlantic seemed more forceful, a spiritual force of mother nature that hit the rocks with power and fury. It has been reported that approximately 40 million enslaved ancestors died during the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade to the North America. It was here that I gain sight about my experience of May 5, 2018 in the Atlantic at Jekyll Island.
As I was experiencing the anxiety attack while in the water, (wondering if the three white males were going to attack me) I became aware that I was experiencing a fraction of the psychological suffering that my ancestors experienced on those ships and by those souls that rest in the bottom of the Atlantic. The brutal trauma and the vicious evil torture that they endured not to mention the brutality they experienced in the Elmina and Cape Coastal Castles before they were placed on the ships enveloped my body, on a cellular level, and flooded my brain, on a neurological level; replayed!
The internal suffering that I was experiencing struck, in the words of Thurman, “at the core of my being.” Thurman goes on to express (and I am paraphrasing here) that it is in such a moment that the God in me and the God before me becomes one beating pulse beat. Heartbeat! In different words, it is in these throes, the pangs of the moment in my own agony, from my own existential, psychological, spiritual and relational self that I meet the Eternal in a transcendent space and place of a new discovery of a new self-fact! Now, in the words of Thurman, “I must introduce this new fact about myself into the image that I had of myself before I knew this fact!” I can never be the same before this moment; for now, I am my ancestors! And, I am connected with the ancestors like never before! I am reborn!
Conclusion: I Am, Ahmaud, Breonna, George, Sandra, Tony, Rayshard!
Mr. Arbery (and all of the names above) was, and remains in spirit, an outstanding young black man! He was health conscious, running a few miles to stay in shape. He was an outstanding athlete and an intellectual young man, and well-liked in his community. I am Ahmaud Arbery because I am equally as vulnerable to have the same fatal experience. I am Ahmaud Arbery in that as an older African American man, I can potentially forget about my surroundings and assume that I am safe from such hideous acts of violence, and not just physically, but also psychologically.
Each of us must honor Mr. Arbery’s legacy (and the Ancestors) through our own personhood. We must continue to be moral agents of change through the transformative power of love and compassion; while, simultaneously ensuring that we stand connected to the pathways that lead to social justice.
I shall honor those Ancestors who survived the enslaved and forced journey to this side of the Atlantic. They call us to recognize their legacy of endurance, perseverance, resiliency, strength, vigor, spirituality, intelligence and courage to dare to survive. I am, Ahmaud, Breonna, George, Sandra, Tony, Rayshard!
For the Ancestors, Namaste’ and Ashe
J. Bernard Kynes, Sr., M.Div., LMFT
ACPE Psychotherapist; AAMFT Clinical Member
May 14, 2020
June 16, 2020 Revised