Hi, I'm Rebecca Monique, an ICF accredited grief and trauma coach and coach supervisor, and these are my passing thoughts. It's been almost a year and a half since season one, and it's taken me forever and a day to get season two launched, but here we are. Welcome. If you're new here, I'm so glad that you found your way to this space. Season one was a series of 100 short, gentle episodes, each one offering a reflection prompt to help you pause, notice, and tend to your inner world. Season two will look and feel different. We're going deeper, passing thoughts become doorways, we're opening them, and we're walking through, slowly, intentionally, with care and curiosity. This season is all about exploring loss, grief and healing through a richer, more layered lens, including their intersections with things like identity, race, culture and embodiment. Expect a soulful blend of coaching, storytelling and education. Because these episodes are more in-depth, they'll be released less frequently, but I'm aiming at the moment for at least one per quarter. But there are many ways that you can stay connected with me between episodes. So that's through my free monthly newsletter, my blog, or even over on Instagram. I've also written a companion blog post for this episode. It goes into more detail about the five soul wounds and it includes reflection prompts and weaves in the cultural lens. All relevant links and information are in the episode description. This episode is divided into timestamped segments for easy navigation, and while I encourage you to listen to the full show, I appreciate that certain parts may speak to you more than others. So let's get into a little bit of grounding and safety, and also I want to just express a few caveats. It's highly likely that what's shared in this episode might stir something within you. These soul wounds run deep. There's no obligation to listen to everything in one go. Pause, breathe, drink some water, step away if you need to. Let this be spacious. Let it be tender. This is sacred work. Listen to what your body is asking of you. Go at your own pace, all right? And if you notice emotions rising, that's not a sign that you're doing it wrong. It's a sign that your body, your soul, is listening. So stay close to yourself. This episode draws on the work of Lise Bulbeau, who is renowned for her work in emotional and holistic healing. She offers a powerful framework for understanding emotional wounds, but no framework is perfect. This one may not reflect the full complexity of your lived experience, especially across different cultures, neurotypes, or life histories. And please know that the exploration of these wounds is not about blaming parents or caregivers, nor is it about pathologizing you. It's about insight, awareness, healing. So use what resonates, leave what doesn't. You are the expert of your story. The experiences I share throughout this episode are my personal memories and interpretations. They're shared with care and in service of a wider healing conversation. Where necessary, I've changed or omitted identity details to protect the privacy of those involved. So let's take a moment to get comfortable, whether you're walking, lying down, or just taking a breath between life's demands. I'm going to offer two questions to help you arrive gently into this episode with me. Like with all prompts throughout the episode, I'll repeat them, so don't worry if you miss them the first time. Prompt 1. What do I need to leave behind in this moment to show up fully here? Prompt 2. What intention do I want to hold while I move through this episode? Let this episode be a soft place for your heart to land. Today, we're gently opening the door to something powerful, the connection between unhealed soul wounds and grief, where we dive into the profound territory of the five soul wounds originally articulated by Lise Bourbeau in her book, Heal Your Wounds and Find Your True Self. I don't cover everything from Bourbeau's book here or in the blog, so I highly recommend reading it for yourself, especially if you want to identify and explore your core and dominant wounds more deeply. While these wounds aren't explicitly framed as grief in Bourbeau's work, I'll be exploring the powerful and often hidden ways that these wounds intersect with loss. And because grief isn't always about death, I'll explore the ways it's woven through many layers of life's invisible breaks and ruptures. And often, beneath our grief, lie emotional wounds, raw places formed in childhood that quietly shape the way that we protect ourselves, even decades later. In this exploration, I'll also bring in a cultural lens to illuminate how these wounds live and breathe differently across communities, especially for those of us navigating racial, gendered and systemic oppression. This isn't just about individual healing. It's about recognising collective pain, ancestral legacies and the cultural contexts that shape our inner landscapes. So let's begin this journey of deep reflection, soulful inquiry and courageous healing together. So I'll start with sharing my passing thoughts. I've got five for this episode. Number one, these wounds are not life sentences. They're invitations to come home, to soften, to reclaim who you've always been. Number two, grief isn't just about what we've lost. It's also about who we've had to become in order to be loved, accepted or safe. Number three, the masks we wear were once medicine. They helped us survive. But healing asks, is this mask still serving me? Or is it suffocating me? Number four. Sometimes the wound isn't just yours. It's your mother's, your father's, your grandmother's. A cultural inheritance passed through silence and bone. Number five. Healing doesn't mean perfection. It means choosing curiosity over shame. It means asking, what does my body, my mind, my soul need today? I promise I'm not gatekeeping. The five soul wounds are by no means a secret, so I'm not going to drag it out. I'll tell you what they are. Bobo outlines five core wounds that arise in childhood. They are rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, and injustice. I'll say those again. Rejection, abandonment, humiliation, betrayal, and injustice. Now, many of us can relate to all five. However, there's normally one core wound and probably two or three that feel dominant. Bourbeau describes four powerful stages that a child passes through before the wound forms. I want you to imagine these almost like four emotional thresholds. So stage one is the most sacred, the joy of being themselves. This is where the child is fully in their essence, radiant, whole, unfiltered. There's delight in their own being. They don't question if they're too much or not enough. They simply are. And that is joy. Stage two is the heartbreak. The pain of not being allowed to be themselves. This is when the environment usually unconsciously says no to who they are. Maybe through punishment, ridicule, withdrawal of love, neglect, or being forced to comply. This is when the child first receives the message, I am not okay as I am. Stage three is the rupture. This is where you see rage and rebellion. This is the soul's protest. The child feels the injustice, and internally and externally, they rebel. This might show up as tantrums, withdrawal, silence, defiance, or all of the above. It's a desperate bid to reclaim their original wholeness. And then comes stage four, the mask-making. The child creates a new acceptable personality. This is where the wound solidifies. The child constructs a version of themselves that they believe will secure safety, love, and acceptance. They become who others need them to be, but not who they truly are. And that's where the mask is born. Not out of vanity, not out of deceit, but out of necessity. It's a survival adaptation. In some ways, it's a brilliant but heartbreaking form of protection. And many of us, especially those of us socialized in environments shaped by colonialism, racism, patriarchy, or other oppressive systems had to start mask making very early. Take a breath. Each of these wounds stems from a moment or series of moments where a vital emotional need went unmet. So to cope, we put on what she calls a mask, a psychological and behavioral defense strategy that protects the wound, but distances us from our true self. These masks are the withdrawal for rejection, the dependent for abandonment, the masochist for humiliation, the controller for betrayal, and the rigid for injustice. I'll say those again. The withdrawer for rejection, the dependent for abandonment, the masochist for humiliation, the controller for betrayal, and the rigid for injustice. Even our bodies hold the imprint. Each wound expresses itself physically, for example, through posture, body shape, or muscular tension. because the body remembers what the mind forgets. And grief is never just about the present moment. It's layered. It echoes. It activates. Let's say you're grieving the end of a relationship. On the surface, it's heartbreak. But under the surface, you might be feeling the ache of abandonment all over again, from a parent who left or couldn't stay emotionally present. Or maybe you're navigating the loss of a job. To others, it's just a career shift. But for you, it triggers the stink of injustice, of being overlooked, underestimated, unrecognised. Especially if, for instance, as a black woman or woman of colour, you've already had to prove your worth tenfold. These soul wounds don't stay in childhood. They whisper through our adult experiences. And when loss occurs, they flare up like old scars. So let's take a look through the cultural lens. It's important to say, for many of us black folks and people of colour, these soul wounds don't exist in a vacuum. They're shaped not just by personal experience, but by the systems that we've had to move through, survive in, and sometimes shrink ourselves for. Rejection might not be about a parent or partner. It can feel like being erased in rooms where your voice, your brilliance, your existence goes unseen. An abandonment, it might show up in the silence of being the only one, in being left to carry things alone, or in the ache of cultural displacement. Betrayal might come not only from people, but from institutions that said that they'll protect you and didn't. And humiliation? That sting of shame can come from being told, directly or indirectly, that who you are is too much, not enough, or not acceptable. And injustice? Well, many of us know what it's like to keep having to prove our worth in systems that weren't built for us. These wounds aren't just emotional. They're historical. They're cultural. Generational. And when we start to see them clearly, we can begin to reclaim the parts of us that got buried beneath the survival. And grief in this context is not always obvious. It can feel like a quiet depletion, a low hum of loss. So let's begin with the first of the five soul wounds, rejection. The rejection wound is often one of the earliest wounds to form, typically in the first few years of life. It develops when a child feels or perceives that their existence, thoughts, emotions, or their very being is unwanted or dismissed, especially by a parent or caregiver of the same sex. Sometimes this rejection is overt, other times it's subtle. This could be the absence of presence, the lack of attunement, the silences that echo louder than words. To cope, the child creates a withdrawer mask. This is the mask of escape and invisibility. The fugitive or withdrawer becomes skilled at disappearing, emotionally, socially, even physically. They might struggle with self-worth, feel easily overwhelmed by conflict or criticism, or fear taking up space. Physically, Bulbo describes the body of someone with this wound as contracted or frail, almost as though they're trying to vanish. So think hollow chest, narrow frame, small movements. It's like the body tries to make itself as unnoticeable as possible, the somatic echo of the emotional wound. And if you're hearing this already and thinking, that sounds like me, please know this, that you're not broken. You are adaptive. You became what you needed to survive. When someone carries the rejection wound, grief is not always visible or validated. It may be deeply internalized. Instead of being able to say, I'm hurting, they might retreat, intellectualize, or minimize their loss. Not because they don't feel, but because they're afraid that their pain won't be welcome. In grief spaces, this often shows up as self-silencing, or conversely, people-pleasing, or even feeling guilty for grieving at all. For many black folks and people of colour, the wound of rejection can feel especially painful when it comes from within their own community. It's not just about personal rejection. Sometimes it's about not feeling fully seen or accepted in spaces that should be safe and nurturing. This might show up as colourism, where lighter skin is valued more, or feeling judged for not fitting traditional family or cultural expectations. Mental health struggles can be dismissed or misunderstood, which makes opening up even harder. And for those navigating multiple cultures or identities like diaspora or LGBTQIA plus experiences, the feeling of not belonging anywhere can run deep. This kind of rejection is complex and layered. It adds to the grief, the invisible pain and the longing for true belonging and acceptance. So I'll share my personal experience of rejection and where I think that this wound was formed for me. So I sometimes wonder if, If the very first rejection that I experienced happened before I even took my first breath in the womb, my birth mother knowing that she would give me away, the quiet grief of being unwanted might have imprinted before I even had the words to understand what I was feeling. Maybe that wound was momentarily soothed when I was chosen, adopted by a woman who loved me, a mother who saw me and called me hers. But the very first rejection I remember, consciously, viscerally, was from a woman, a family friend. I was eight. My adopted mum had just died of a heart attack. I was heartbroken, disoriented, and desperately trying to find something solid to hold on to. This woman took me in, and yet, from the moment I stepped into her home, I could feel the heat of her disdain. It wasn't just dislike. It was hatred. and I felt it in every look, every word left unsaid, every sharp breath. She looked me dead in the eye and said, your mum died because of you. She was sick, but she didn't want to go to the hospital because she was worried about who'd look after you, her precious daughter. I lost my friend because of you. Let that land. I was eight years old, grieving, newly orphaned, and those words seared through me like wildfire. And then I had to live with her for a year. Every interaction, a reinforcement of that message that you are not wanted. You are the burden. You are the reason for this pain. It wasn't just rejection. It was emotional exile. A core memory of being emotionally excommunicated. And the child in me didn't know where to place that pain. So she folded it into herself and wore it like a skin and kept on surviving. Okay, let's press our palms against the past and feel what's still warm. Take a moment to reflect with me. Here are your prompts. I'll repeat them, but press pause if you need more time. When in your life have you felt like your presence wasn't fully welcome? When in your life have you felt like your presence wasn't fully welcome? What are the ways that you've learned to disappear emotionally, socially, physically? What are the ways that you've learned to disappear emotionally, socially, physically? What part of you is asking to be seen even if it feels uncomfortable? What part of you is asking to be seen even if it feels uncomfortable? In what ways have you felt unseen or rejected within your own community or culture? And how might this have shaped your sense of belonging and self-worth? How might this have shaped your sense of belonging and self-worth? Take a breath here. If your body is asking for rest or stillness, give yourself permission to pause. I'll still be here when you return. Okay, so now let's move through the wounds to the second, which is the abandonment wound. So abandonment is the wound of feeling emotionally or physically left behind. It doesn't always come from someone physically walking away. It can be a parent who was emotionally unavailable, a caregiver who was overwhelmed, a teacher who dismissed your presence, or a lover who made you feel alone, even while lying next to you. According to Bourbeau, this wound often develops between the ages of one and three years old, typically with a parent of the opposite sex. The child experiences a rupture in emotional connection and begins to associate intimacy with instability. To protect themselves from the ache of being left again, they develop the dependent mask, a personality that clings, pleases, or seeks constant reassurance. You might notice this wound in how you struggle with endings or separations. Maybe avoid initiating breakups, hold on to relationships past their expiry date, or feel deep anxiety when people don't text back. In her book, Bobo says, The person who suffers from the abandonment wound becomes emotionally dependent on others. They fear solitude, often looking for someone who will rescue or complete them. Now here's where I want to gently weave in grief. Abandonment is... One of the most unspoken griefs that we carry. The grief of not being chosen. The grief of growing up too fast. The grief of being present in a room but never truly seen. Of calling out emotionally and hearing silence in return. This is not always caused by intentional harm. Sometimes it's the product of generational trauma, poverty, war, mental illness, or simply parents who were themselves abandoned. As adults, we may grieve the inner child who needed consistency but got chaos. We may find ourselves navigating secondary abandonment, where we open up in therapy, in friendships, in love, and still feel missed or dismissed. When we carry the wound of abandonment, we carry more than just the absence of a person. We carry a constellation of losses that often go unnamed, yet shape us all the same. Let's name some of them. The loss of innocence, that tender trust that someone will stay. The loss of visibility, when our needs become too much or not enough to be noticed. The loss of stability, where home becomes a place of walking on eggshells. The loss of care, where the one who was meant to soothe us had no balm to offer. The loss of security, replaced by the constant scanning, will you leave too? The loss of connection, where the bond was severed long before we had words for the ache. The loss of consistency, the kind that teaches a nervous system, you're safe now. The loss of mirroring, where no one reflected back that you matter, that you are lovable. The loss of worth, because somewhere along the way, we internalised, if they left, it must be me. The loss of belonging, where we were in the room, but never felt rooted. The loss of voice, because we learned it was safer to silence our needs than to risk another exit. And the loss of hope, the quiet, creeping grief that maybe, just maybe, no one is coming. Each of these losses deserves to be mourned, not just so that we can move on, but so that we can move through with compassion, with clarity, and the courage to reparent ourselves. Okay, so let's take a look through the cultural lens. For black folks and other people of color, abandonment is ancestral. We carry the weight of histories where families were forcibly separated through slavery, colonialisation, migration, adoption, diaspora. There are stories untold, mothers unnamed, fathers who disappeared, not always by choice. This legacy can shape a deep cellular fear. Will I be left again? Am I safe to attach? Within our own communities, abandonment might look like being told that you're too sensitive when you express hurt and left bearing your pain. Cultural taboos around mental health or emotion, leaving you unsupported. Colorism and texturism that leads to some favored and others cast aside. Elders and religious leaders rejecting and abandoning you when you step outside tradition. It's also systemic. Societal abandonment is very present. It looks like being told your pain isn't valid unless it's palatable. It sounds like a curriculum that doesn't name your ancestors, but only does, but in chains. It feels like walking into spaces, schools, hospitals, offices, where your body is present but your humanity isn't reflected. Societal abandonment is when justice is delayed or denied, when languages are lost to assimilation, when cultural rituals are dismissed as primitive, when the state shows up too late or not at all. It's the inherited grief of watching your community be over-policed and under-protected, your heritage commodified but not honoured, These aren't abstract concepts, they're daily reckonings, and they compound the abandonment many of us have already known in our families and personal lives. Now, when my adopted mother died, I felt a deep, echoing sorrow. A sense of abandonment, yes, but not betrayal, not consciously. Her death was tragic and out of her control, and yet her absence pierced something ancient within me. It awakened a much earlier loss, the first time I was given away by my biological parents. Socially orphaned as a baby, then truly orphaned again at the age of eight. To be abandoned twice before my 10th birthday, to face the weighty questions of what now, when you're barely old enough to understand permanence. It was terrifying. I didn't have the words then, but my inner script quietly rewrote itself into a painful question. Why does no one love me enough to stay? Now, according to Bourbeau, the abandonment wound often links to the parent of the opposite sex. And while my biological father's absence no doubt sowed some of those seeds, the first conscious embodied experience of abandonment came through someone else. My adopted mother's boyfriend. He wasn't a constant fixture. He didn't live with us. But every Saturday he'd come. He was warm, attentive, playful. He taught me how to ride a bike. He made me feel like I mattered. And I called him dad. And he never made me feel unwanted. When my mother died, he stepped in. He didn't fight for legal guardianship, maybe he couldn't, but he was present. He visited weekly, gave me pocket money. Slowly I began spending weekends with him and his new partner and her sons. And this woman, this woman was the first person to ever ask me how I really was after my mum died. She saw me. She saw my pain. She was nurturing. Gentle and open-hearted. Her boys felt like the brothers I never had. For the first time in a long time, I felt a flicker of hope. The possibility of a new family, a soft place to land. But then everything shattered. There was a day, the day I was meant to move in with them. This was just over a year after my adopted mum died. I packed my things, I was ready, I was waiting. But the woman I was staying with informed my aunt, who was my adopted mum's elder sister. And let me just give you some context. This aunt had been the first mothering figure that I'd known. She'd raised me in Sierra Leone before I came to the UK. She was doting, affectionate, and I adored her. When my aunt found out, she stormed over. She took me back to my adopted mum's home, the house that I'd grown up in before she died. And when he came to collect me, all hell broke loose. There was shouting, accusations. My aunt said that he had no right, that this wasn't what my adopted mum would have wanted. She told me to stand behind her. She squared up to him like a lioness. She shouted, you're not taking her over my dead body. Then the scuffle began. I was caught in the middle, literally being pulled between them. She punched him. His glasses flew. Her earrings dropped. My clothes tore. I screamed, dad. She turned to me and said, he's not your father. And that was it. He stopped pulling, he let go. He looked at me, his face gentle, his voice calm, and he said, I'm sorry. And he left. That was the day my heart broke in a new, sharper way. That was the day that I internalized the belief that men leave, they always leave. Whether paternal or romantic, they don't stay. They won't fight, they won't protect me, and I cannot rely on them. After that, I was hidden. My aunt took me to stay with an elderly family friend. I was told not to tell anyone where I was. For three months, I disappeared. Not just abandoned, but erased. So before I'd even turned ten, I had already known six different carers, passed from one household to another like a parcel with no return address. Abandoned, reclaimed, relocated, rejected. Each move carved a new echo into the hollow ache of uncertainty. each goodbye branding the belief that I was no one's forever. Now, as an adult doing the inner work, I can see that he didn't walk away because he stopped caring. He wasn't weak or unwilling. He simply couldn't win against the force of my aunt. He surrendered for my safety, perhaps, or because the fight was already lost. But still, that moment left a mark, a template, one that I would unknowingly replicate in adult relationships. Waiting for the moment a man would leave, because deep down I believed that they always do. Let's meet ourselves in this moment. Here are three reflection prompts for you. When did you first feel abandoned, emotionally or physically? When did you first feel abandoned, emotionally or physically? How have you adapted yourself to avoid being left again? How have you adapted yourself to avoid being left again? And where in your life are you still waiting to be rescued? Where in your life are you still waiting to be rescued? This is tender work. If you need a moment to breathe, cry, stretch, or simply step away, honor that. And if you're ready, let's keep going. The humiliation wound is deeply entangled with grief. It's the sorrow of being made to feel small, dirty or shameful, often in the moments that we most needed tenderness or grace or protection. Humiliation can feel like a public stripping of dignity or a quiet erosion of self-worth behind closed doors. In grief, this wound whispers, you're too much, you're not enough, and the shame keeps us silent. According to Bourbeau, the humiliation wound is inflicted when we feel degraded, belittled or shamed. often by caregivers who smothered or ridiculed our autonomy and our body. It's linked to the parent of the same sex and is often carried in the body through weight struggles or feelings of guilt around pleasure, need or vulnerability. And the mask that we wear? The masochist. Someone who may overgive, over-serve or take on the burdens of others, seeking redemption through self-sacrifice. Bourbeau says that those with a humiliation wound often have rounder, heavier bodies, particularly in the lower body, as if their bodies are carrying the weight of shame or guilt. She describes this as a form of self-punishment, where even pleasure can feel like something to be ashamed of. This is the wound that hides behind the laugh, behind the over-functioning, behind the I've-got-it-all-handled exterior. It's the voice that says, don't need too much, don't be messy, don't draw attention. Perhaps you grew up in a home where your body was policed, where your sensuality was shamed before it ever bloomed, where your laughter was too loud, your questions too bold, your tears too inconvenient. Grief enters here too. Grief at the child who can expel themselves freely, for the teen who was shamed into silence, for the adult who still flinches of vulnerability. So where do we see the humiliation-grief link? In body shame and disordered eating, where grief is entangled in a war with flesh. in over-responsibility and martyrdom, grieving the freedom to rest or be cared for, in mocking our desires, identity or self-expression, grieving the joy that we were denied, in the aftermath of public humiliation at school, online, in families, where we grieve the right to be seen without shame. So let's talk not just about the personal sting of humiliation, but the cultural shape that it takes. the kind that lingers in the bones of black and global majority communities, the kind that is inherited, disguised as discipline, embedded in survival strategies, and weaponized within systems that were never made for us to thrive. So with systemic humiliation, for example, from the moment of colonial conquest to the violence of transatlantic slavery and the ongoing trauma of institutional racism, humiliation has been used as a tool of control. It's deliberate, designed, and it runs deep. We're talking about public dehumanization. Our bodies policed, our voices muted, our emotions dismissed, our hair, our names, our languages scrutinized. It's our girls and our women being hyper-sexualized, exoticized, and simultaneously shamed for our bodies or emotional expression. Humiliation is too often inherited. It's being praised for resilience while being denied softness. You know it. It's the, you're so articulate microaggressions, the where are you really from curiosities that are anything but innocent. The pressure to code switch, to suppress your dialect, to polish your English, to present a curated, palatable self. And the ache of not seeing yourself in leadership, in history books, in media, except as a stereotype or as a token. All of this is a form of systemic humiliation. It whispers, then it shouts. You don't belong here. You're too much. You're not enough. It creates chronic shame, internalised inferiority, and a grief so subtle and so constant that we almost forget what it feels like to be fully unapologetically seen. And then there's intergenerational humiliation, the humiliation that gets passed down, not because our parents or caregivers are cruel, but because they were humiliated too, because they survived things that they could never speak of. We call it tough love, but often it's inherited shame. For many of us, this looked like being raised with harshness, not because they didn't love us, but because they thought it would prepare us for a harsh world. I have to be tough on you so that the world doesn't break you. It looked like being disciplined in public to show others that our family had standards, that we were respectable, that we knew our place. It looked like being shamed for our bodies, our clothes, our desires. It looked like Hearing messages about our skin being too dark, our hair being too nappy, reverberations of colonial lives still alive in our homes. And this was so normalised, so wrapped up in culture that we didn't always have the language to call it what it was. And here's where it gets even more tender. Sometimes the most painful humiliation didn't come from outside, it came from our own communities. From the auntie who said you were too fat, from the uncle who mocked your dreams, from the cousins who said you were too white, too weird, too quiet. From the community that policed your joy, your softness, your creativity. For being told you think you're better for aspiring to more, or you're not black enough because you didn't conform to a narrow idea of what that meant. For being shamed for asking questions, for being sensitive, for wanting to be loved. From being told culture comes before you, and knowing that that meant that you had to disappear a little, or a lot. This is humiliation too. And it creates an emotional homelessness, a feeling of not quite belonging anywhere, not with the mainstream, and not always within our own. It's tender terrain, but naming it and holding it with care, we begin to unshame the wound. We begin to remember we're not too much, we're not too sensitive, we're not the problem. We must grieve the internalized shame, the stereotypes that we swallowed, The times that we were told that our beauty or our brilliance was too much. We are worthy of dignity, of softness, of being held, always. So as you know, after my adopted mum died, I was sent to live with a woman who had befriended her, a West African family of five. They were a married couple with three daughters in their early to mid-teens. From being an early child in a quiet home of two to a crowded house where privacy dissolved into thin air, my life changed overnight. There was no space of my own, not even within myself. This woman would sit across the room, glaring, and I don't mean glance, I mean a full silent minute of burning eyes on my body. And if I dared to meet her gaze, her voice would erupt. What are you looking at? Don't look at me. How dare you look me in the eye? That's disrespectful. The room would go silent, then the others would turn and stare. And I became the spectacle. I became the girl whose existence was an offence. Oh, you think you're pretty? She once scoffed, eyes scanning my face with disgust. Then she'd say something in her native tongue, words that I couldn't understand, but I felt all the same. Laughter, stares, isolation. Though we were all from the same part of the world, I was othered, made to feel that Sierra Leone was lesser, that I was lesser. My body became her battlefield. Don't swing your legs! Don't sit like that. Don't wear that. In other words, don't be visible. Don't take up space. And when I cried because I was eight and grief was howling through my bones, she'd snap. Why are you crying? What are you crying for? Go upstairs if you're going to cry. I didn't say anything bad enough to you to make you cry. Even pain had to be hidden. Even sorrow wasn't allowed a voice. She did our hair, all the girls, and mine. And if you know... Black girl's hair. The tenderness of our scouts. But she made no effort to be gentle. And I remember once crying as she tugged the comb through my hair. And then she gripped it tighter and snarled. Let me show you how I could comb your hair if I wanted to make you cry. But I don't. So stop crying. Saturday mornings were for chores. And I didn't sweep properly. She laughed. What? You don't know how to sweep? Was your mum so soft that she never made you clean? I was eight, and every word felt as though she was peeling the skin off my childhood. And she once told me, I'm doing this for your mum, not for you. She said it plainly in front of everyone. She was being paid to care for me, but she made sure that I knew that it was a favour, a burden that she begrudgingly carried. There's a particular grief that comes when care is coated in resentment. When love is withheld, but the obligation is performed like theatre. You learn to shrink so you don't tip the balance. I grieve more than just my mother in that house. I grieve my body autonomy. Every single part of me was policed and criticised. I grieved my emotional freedom, so tears were seen as weakness, as insult. I grieve compassion, comfort, and the sacred right to simply be a child. I grieve safety, choice, dignity. I grieved wonder, the kind of wonder that a child is supposed to wake up with. And like many griefs, it didn't end in childhood. That humiliation shaped the adult I became. The one who never asked for help, afraid it would make me feel indebted. The one who moved quietly, too afraid that my body might offend. The one who stiffened in rooms, who froze at attention, who swallowed feelings whole just to stay safe. That's what the humiliation room does. It teaches you that being seen is dangerous, that expressing yourself will cost you, that your body, your needs, your tears must be managed, hidden, and then silenced. But I'm unlearning that, gently, unhurriedly. Grieving, yes, but grieving out loud, with grace, with rage, with reclaimed softness. Okay, let's honour what's rising. Here are some reflection prompts for you. When were you made to feel ashamed of your body, your needs or your desires? When did you first learn to hide your joy, or your beauty, or your softness? When did you first learn to hide your joy, your beauty, your softness? What parts of yourself have you hidden because of past humiliation? What parts of yourself have you hidden because of past humiliation? When have there been moments where someone from your own community humiliated you in the name of love or discipline? When have there been moments where someone from your own community humiliated you in the name of love or discipline? What parts of yourself did you have to shrink to stay safe or accepted? How can you begin to reclaim your dignity, your joy, your unapologetic presence? How can you begin to reclaim your dignity, your joy, your unapologetic presence? Your nervous system is wise. If it's whispering for a break, heed its call. If you feel steady enough, we'll move gently forward. The betrayal wound originates between the ages of two and four, often in relationship to a parent of the opposite sex. It's typically rooted in experiences where a child feels let down, abandoned in their trust, or unprotected, especially if promises were broken, needs were ignored. they were thrust into responsibilities too soon. The mask associated with the betrayal wound is the controller. This mask forms as a protective layer. If I control things, I can't be hurt again. People wearing this mask often seem assertive, strong-willed, even domineering. But beneath it lies a child who once felt painfully exposed to the chaos or unreliability of others and decided it was safer to grip tightly than to trust freely. Physically, Bilbo describes those with a predominant betrayal wound as having a strong, defiant body. Broad shoulders, a robust muscular frame, often with intense eyes. Their posture exudes control, power and authority. It's a body that says, I've got this. Even when the heart quietly whispers, I wish someone else did. But what often accompanies this wound is grief. Grief for the innocence of trust. Grief for having to grow up too fast. Grief all the times your yes wasn't honoured and your no wasn't safe. And grief for the roles that you took on just to feel safe or worthy. Betrayal ruptures more than trust. It dismantles orientation to safety. The grief here isn't always loud. It's a subtle ache of self-doubt. The tightening in your chest when someone says, you can count on me. The sigh when you realise you've over-functioned again. It's the grief of watching yourself build entire scaffolds of control, only to realise you still feel alone. In betrayal, we lose more than a person. We lose the version of ourselves who believed. We lose tenderness, ease, the simple, sacred act of leaning on others. But healing isn't about dismantling the controller. It's about meeting the parts of us that learn to control and offering them rest. For many black folks and people of color, the betrayal wound is woven into collective memory. We've inherited stories of betrayal by systems, by governments, by educational institutions that promised opportunity but delivered punishment, by medical structures that swore to care but have caused harm. Betrayal shows up as gaslighting in the workplace when you're told that your experiences of racism are exaggerated or imagined. It shows up in faith communities where spiritual language is weaponized to silence or to shame. It lives in family systems where you're told to keep secrets to protect the family's reputation, even when that secret is your own pain. And there's an added layer, intra-community betrayal. When people from our own racial or cultural background dismiss, envy or exploit our vulnerability. When elders who should have shielded us, shamed us instead. When we're taught loyalty, but not safety. When respect is demanded from you, but never reciprocated. These betrayals sting differently, because they were supposed to be safe, because they wear familiar faces, because they came wrapped in duty, expectation and silence. For black women especially, betrayal often comes through what Audre Lorde describes as the mythical norm. We are told to be dependable, maternal, hardworking, resilient, but where in this matrix is there room for disappointment? Where is the space for saying, I'm hurt, I'm tired, I feel exposed? When institutions tell us to speak up but punish us for raising our voices, that's betrayal. When cultural narratives revere our strength but ignore our suffering, that's betrayal. When we're told to hold the community together, even when it's splintering us inside, that's betrayal. For those of us navigating racialized womanhood, we're often betrayed by the silence surrounding us, by the ways that people avert their eyes when our pain is too inconvenient, by the way that society applauds our endurance, but never offers reprieve. My earliest experience of the betrayal wound didn't come from the caregiver of the opposite sex, as Bourbeau suggests. It came from women, from those who should have stood as pillars of safety, but instead became sources of harm. I first think about my adopted mum's so-called friend, a woman who I was meant to trust, and yet after my mother died, she treated me like I was nothing, less than nothing. I felt the betrayal not just for myself, but on behalf of my adopted mother, who I imagine would have been heartbroken to know how her supposed friend handled my life. This woman, rather than lifting me towards a stable future, criminalised the man who wanted to care for me, my mum's boyfriend. She twisted love into suspicion, hope into danger. She couldn't bear the thought of me having a good life, so she made sure that I didn't. Then came the betrayal that changed everything. I was placed under the guardianship of my adopted mother's first cousin. The adults knew that she had severe mental health struggles. They knew. And yet they handed me over to her, a child, to be raised in chaos. What followed for seven years was a storm of abuse. Physical, emotional, psychological. Her narcissism wasn't the colloquial kind that people casually toss around. It was clinical. Consuming. Intoxicating. Anyone who survived a narcissistic caregiver knows that betrayal lives on a cellular level. You don't just feel hurt. You feel dismantled. She lied in ways that made me question my reality. She assassinated my character to others while playing this benevolent carer. She manipulated with surgical precision. It wasn't just betrayal. It was the weaponization of intimacy. A person who should have protected me became the architect of internal and external violence. She didn't nurture, she violated. That kind of betrayal doesn't just scar, it rewires. It teaches your nervous system to mistrust closeness, to see love as a setup. It plants the seed that those who get too close might one day turn on you. Let's begin where we are and see where we arrive. Here are gentle invitations to connect to your inner world. Let's locate the betrayal wound, not just in memory, but in the body, the patterns, the paths. When did you first feel let down by someone you depended on? What did you do to protect yourself in that moment? And what do you still do now? When did you first feel let down by someone you depended on? What did you do to protect yourself in that moment? And what do you still do now? In what ways have you become the protector you never had? What is the cost of always being the strong one? Where do you struggle to trust others and where do you struggle to trust yourself? Where do you struggle to trust others and where do you struggle to trust yourself? If your heart feels full, if your throat feels tight, if your chest feels heavy, press pause. Take care of yourself first. And when you're ready, let's keep going. The injustice wound is a deep simmering ache born from a sense that the world is unfair. That life has dealt you a hand weighted with imbalance, cruelty or neglect. This wound carries the pain of unfair treatment, inequality, and the frustration of being misunderstood or dismissed, often linked to systemic forces like racism, sexism, or classism. It's a wound that feels like the scales of life are tipped against you, and it can leave you feeling powerless, angry, or profoundly disillusioned. People with this wound often wear the mask of righteous anger or indignation, fiercely principled, uncompromising in their sense of fairness. Bourbeau names this the Rigidity Mask. Beneath that mask is vulnerability, a profound disappointment with how the world has failed to uphold justice. Sometimes this can look like stubbornness or an inability to forgive, but it's really about a heart deeply wounded by injustice. The body holds this wound in tense shoulders, a clenched jaw, chronic stress or inflammation, physical echoes of the fight to stay upright, a fight back against unfairness. It can manifest as migraines, digestive issues or a heavy chest. like carrying injustice in our very bones. For people from marginalised communities, this wound is often magnified and made more complex by systemic oppression and historical trauma. The injustice isn't just personal, but collective, experienced through racism, colonialism, gender violence, or economic disenfranchisement. This cultural layer means grief related to injustice is not only about personal loss, but also about the loss of safety, dignity, identity and belonging. The wound is cyclical, passed through generations, making healing both deeply personal and politically charged. For example, black women navigating intersecting oppressions may face compounded losses, not only losing loved ones, but also opportunities curtailed by racial discrimination, cultural erasure and social invisibility. Grief and the injustice wound often intertwine because loss can feel deeply unfair. Whether it's the death of a loved one, the loss of opportunities or dignity, When grief is compounded by injustice, the pain can deepen, sometimes turning to bitterness, despair or paralysis. For those living with systemic discrimination, this isn't an isolated wound, but a chronic state, making healing a complex journey that requires acknowledging both personal and collective grief. Let's name the secondary losses associated with the injustice wound. Loss of trust in institutions, the legal system, healthcare, education. Loss of safety or sense of home in one's community. Loss of cultural heritage or language through forced assimilation. Loss of career or economic opportunities due to discrimination. Loss of self-worth or identity due to internalised oppression. Loss of relationships or community due to social stigma around speaking out. For me, the injustice wound wasn't born in a single moment. It took root early. Layered and loud, forming not through answers, but through questions. Questions that echo through the bones of a child trying to make sense of turmoil. Why me? Why did my biological parents want me? Why was I left behind before I even had a chance to arrive? Why don't I have loving, consistent caregivers like other children seem to? Why does nobody stay? Why does no one love me enough to fight for me, to keep me, to see me through? Why is no one looking out for me? Why is no one coming? Why did I have to survive all that abuse? The physical abuse, the emotional abuse, the spiritual abuse, and still be expected to perform, to behave, to succeed? Why does life seem to hand me tragedy after tragedy, like grief is stitched into the lining of my existence? This isn't just unfair, it's soul-fracturing, it's relentless. The injustice wound for me isn't just about isolated unfair events. It's about being forced to grow up in a world that felt indifferent to my suffering. It's about innocence stolen without apology. About systems that failed. Adults that watched and stayed silent. About a child who was constantly overlooked and still somehow expected to be grateful. And the secondary losses were countless. The loss of trust in adults. The loss of my right to a soft childhood. The loss of being believed. the loss of feeling chosen, wanted, safeguarded, the loss of fairness itself. Injustice taught me to be hypervigilant, to anticipate harm, to perform perfection as a shield. And maybe most painfully, it taught me that being a good girl, a strong girl, a resilient girl, didn't guarantee safety or success. And that, that betrayal of goodness, that's an injustice all of its own. So, let's gather the fragments and listen in. Because the injustice wound reaches into both our personal ache and our cultural inheritance, here I'm offering more prompts, seven to be exact, for deeper reflection. Where in your life do you feel the deepest sense of injustice? Where in your life do you feel the deepest sense of injustice? How has your wound shaped your relationship with loss and grief? has this wound shaped your relationship with loss and grief does it harden you numb you awaken you sharpen your empathy in what ways has cultural or systemic injustice impacted your experience of loss in what ways has cultural or systemic injustice impacted your experience of loss How do you carry the legacy of injustice within your family, community or your identity? How do you carry the legacy of injustice within your family, community or identity? Where do you feel safe to express your righteous anger and grief? Where do you feel safe to express your righteous anger and grief? How might healing from this wound involve both personal forgiveness and systemic change? What stories of resilience exist within your cultural or ancestral background that can support your healing? What stories of resilience exist within your cultural or ancestral background that can support your healing. Your grief, your body, your breath, they all get a say. If now feels like enough, pause here, drink water, be still, and if you're ready, let's keep unfolding. How do we begin to heal these wounds? Healing the five soul wounds isn't about perfection or fixing ourselves. It's about presence, about awareness, about reconnection. It's about tending to the younger versions of ourselves with compassion and care, listening to the parts that we exiled, peeling back the masks we learned to wear to survive, and remembering that we are worthy of love without performance or pretense. Bobo's book offers detailed pathways for each wound, and I truly recommend reading it to explore your own I've only skimmed the surface in this episode. From a cultural lens, healing also means addressing the ancestral and collective pain that lives in our bodies. It means naming what was erased, reclaiming what was silenced, and choosing softness in cultures that demanded we be strong. It means pleasure as protest, rest as resistance, boundaries as birthrights. If you're wondering where to start, here are five reflection prompts to sit compassionately with What am I still carrying that doesn't belong to me? What am I still carrying that doesn't belong to me? What main mask did I wear to be accepted and what did it cost me? What main mask did I wear to be accepted and what did it cost me? How did my culture or upbringing shape the way I respond to pain? How did my cultural upbringing shape the way that I respond to pain? Where in my life can I create more space for rest, softness and truth? Where in my life can I create more space for rest, softness and truth? What would healing look like if I weren't doing it alone, but alongside my ancestors, community and future generations? What would healing look like if I weren't doing it alone, but alongside my ancestors, community and future generations? Take a moment now, breathe. Healing is not a sprint. You don't have to rush to make meaning or to take action. Let the words settle like rain into soil. Let them nourish what needs to grow. Exhale. Now we come to a very special part of the show that I'm calling the Tender Ask. This is where a listener's question takes centre stage and I offer a response rooted in love, wisdom and gentle guidance. It's a space of care and reflection where no question is too small or too big and every heart is held with kindness. As this is the first in the series, this episode's Tender Ask comes from a question that I hear often in my practice and that question is... How can I tell when I'm having a trauma response versus when I'm not? And this is such an important question. Many people on the healing path, myself included, wrestle with the difference between a trauma response and simply feeling uncomfortable, emotionally activated, or even violated in the present moment. Clinically, when we talk about trauma responses, we're really looking at a spectrum of survival adaptations. These are patterns that are rooted on our nervous system's survival wiring, often stemming from a past experience where we felt unsafe, overwhelmed or powerless. These responses can show up as fight, flight, freeze, fawn or dissociation. Each has its own shape, rhythm and route. Some are more bodily, some are more behavioural and some, like dissociation, are both neurological and psychological. they're usually disproportionate to the present moment because the body is responding as if the past is happening again let's take the word trigger in clinical psychology a trigger refers to a stimulus often sensory that causes a sudden onset or spike in symptoms associated with ptsd or complex trauma this might include flashbacks dissociation hypervigilance or panic It's not simply feeling annoyed or uncomfortable. It's your system reliving something that it didn't get to safely process at the time. So in pop psychology or social media spaces, triggered has often been diluted to mean something that made me feel awkward, upset or mildly distressed. And while discomfort is worth naming, it's important not to collapse it into trauma lexicon. Doing so can unintentionally minimise the experiences of those living with real trauma. And it can also muddy your own clarity around what's actually happening in your body. Here are two quick comparisons to help differentiate. A trauma response looks like this. So you meet someone who raises their voice slightly, your heart races, your vision narrows, you feel dizzy, and you can't concentrate. You later realize they reminded you, maybe unconsciously, of an abusive caregiver or a violent memory. An in-the-moment violation looks like this. Someone raises their voice at you aggressively, In the present moment, you feel hurt. A boundary may have been crossed or maybe you're angry. You're responding to the event, not reliving a past trauma, but experiencing a present one that warrants action, maybe some protection, and perhaps even reflection. From a cultural lens, particularly for racialized bodies, we often walk around with complex inherited grief and hypervigilance. Our systems might be chronically activated, not because we're broken or overly sensitive, but because we're navigating environments that were never built for our thriving. So sometimes it's both a trauma response and a present violation. It's not always either or. It can be both and. And that's part of the work, building the awareness to pause and ask, is this about now or then or both? I want to stress that this isn't a complete or clinical assessment. I'm offering a general reflection, not a diagnosis. So if you're feeling unsure, this is where working with a trauma-informed therapist, a coach or clinician can be really helpful. Hold yourself with compassion, not scrutiny. You don't have to get it perfect. Just keep being curious, keep being kind and open to your body's wisdom. Okay, so now we're entering the part of the episode that I call 10 Truths Told. This is where I read 10 listener-submitted truths from a sentence stem. These are quiet declarations, pieces of wisdom, moments of tenderness and insight shared from the hearts of this community. There's something deeply healing in hearing others put words to what we've felt but maybe never spoken. For this episode, as it's the first in this series, I asked 10 clients, past and present, to complete the following sentence stem. A piece of advice I'd give the version of myself at the beginning of my healing journey is... What follows are their responses, offered with love, tenderness and truth. All responses have been shared with permission and will remain anonymous in this instance. As you listen, see which words echo in your body, which ones stir something within you. Let's honour their wisdom. Let's begin. A piece of advice I'd give the version of myself at the beginning of my healing journey is... Truth number one, it's okay if you don't have all the answers yet, just take it one day at a time. Truth number two, you don't have to be strong all the time, let people in, let them help. Truth number three, you're allowed to feel angry, sad, confused, whatever your feeling is valid. Truth number four, not everyone will get it, and that's fine, find the people who do. Truth number five, rest isn't laziness, it's necessary. Truth number six, you're not failing at healing if you're still hurting. It's not a straight line. Truth number seven, trust your body's wisdom, even when your mind is full of noise. Truth number eight, speak up sooner. Your voice matters more than you realize. Truth number nine, you will laugh again, dance again, and feel light again, even if you don't believe it yet. And truth number 10, you'll grow into someone who feels safe in their own skin. It just takes time. And for the next episode, if you'd like to be part of the 10 Truths Told segment, here's a sentence stem I'm inviting you to complete. Something I no longer apologise for is... That's something I no longer apologise for is... You can submit your responses anonymously if you prefer by following the link in the episode description. I'll read out 10 submissions in the next episode. As always, there's no pressure to be profound. Just be honest. Your truth might be exactly what someone else needs to hear. Okay, so in the next episode, we'll be exploring grief through the lens of racial fetishization. How being desired can also be a kind of erasure. It's a tender and necessary conversation and I'll be sharing my personal lived experience, unpacking the nuances and bringing some critical insight. So if that speaks to your experience or your curiosity, I invite you to join me again when the time comes. Thank you for showing up for yourself and for the life-altering inner work that you're doing. Healing and reflection take time and space, so please be gentle with yourself as you carry this episode with you. If this episode has resonated with you, I'd be grateful if you could leave a podcast rating or review because it really helps others who need this work to find the show. And if you want to explore this work further or simply stay connected, you'll find links to my offerings, blog and socials in the description. Keep healing, resting and evolving inward, outward, upward. Speak to you soon. Until then, be well.