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As we took turns shoveling dirt over the grave that contained Alphonso’s cloth draped remains, I felt numb and powerless.

Alphonso was a 7-foot gregarious gentle giant who earnestly practiced his Muslim faith and loved his family. He was one of our first clients at New Start Project, an organization that I started in the city of Boston in 2013 to provide men recently released from prison with mentoring, housing, and employment assistance.

Alphonso expressed optimism about rebuilding his life and his family. He worked long hours for minimum wage. After work, he would volunteer in our office and on Saturdays regularly attend our empowerment meetings. Alphonso and his wife Michelle held their wedding ceremony in our organization’s conference room. Out of respect for Alphonso’s faith, I would participate in the Muslim noonday prayer. The empowerment of our client was spiritual as well as socio-economic. Shortly before Alfonso’s death, he came into our office and implored me to start a substance abuse program which confirmed what other clients had informed me- Alphonso was losing the battle with his addiction.

I told him that a collaboration was in the works with another organization to provide services to our clients. Several weeks later I received a call while facilitating an empowerment meeting that Alfonso had died of a drug overdose. I was shocked. I was also angry that another person in my life had succumbed to addiction.

I received a similar call five years earlier when my stepfather had died from a heart attack due to a drug overdose. Alphonso and my stepdad taught me a valuable life lesson, that the road to wholeness can be complicated and precarious. Redemption and wholeness sometime elude the most sincere intentions.

While getting to know New Start Project participants, I discovered a pattern that all of the men shared. They had all had experienced some form of childhood trauma of physical, sexual, emotional or verbal abuse. The similar trauma that slaves and the men in our program of African descent experienced were strikingly similar. The results of this trauma were the same too. Slavery and incarceration both disrupted their life cycle of education, marriage, family, and access to livable wage employment. In community meetings that pertained to community policing, I began to hear the term historical trauma. I started to research the term and learned it is defined as the emotional and psychological wounding of a collective group across generation due to a cataclysmic event or experience. The subject of historical trauma has evoked interest, research, and debate in academic circles and social forums.

There’s increased research on the theory of its impact on groups such as Native Americans who were victims of forced relocation and African Americans who were subjected to slavery. In the case of African Americans the theory of historical trauma is passed on through discrimination; stereotypes; and health and income disparities. Dr. Keisha Ross, a psychologist and author of “Impacts of Historical Trauma on African Americans and Effect on Help Seeking Behaviors” contends that victim’s historical trauma may subconsciously internalize the views of the oppressors and inflict anger, hatred, and aggression against its own group.

Dr. Alexander Loyd in his book, “Beyond Willpower” also contends that cellular memories are passed down on a cellular unconscious level. Dr. Lloyd contends that stress even includes generational memories. Citing that you could have a great childhood and trauma-free life, but for some reason have confidence issues, depression issues, health issues, and addictions. Historical trauma causes new individual trauma often created through adverse childhood experiences that are created through physical, sexual, or emotional abuse. This leads to mental illness, broken families and incarceration.

In return, the trauma manifests itself through a variety of behaviors such as violence, alcoholism, drug addiction, and promiscuity. While continuing my research and interaction with our clients I began to identify generational cycles of historic trauma within my own family.

I grew up in a home witnessing domestic violence between my stepfather and mother. I was subjected to verbal and emotional abuse by my mother. My mother was a victim of physical, verbal, and emotional abuse by her mother, because my mother was conceived as a result of my grandmother being raped by a family friend. My grandmother lived a short life full of anger and emotional pain and was found dead by my aunt after suffering a heart attack in her sleep at the age of thirty. My mother was often emotionally and verbally abusive to my brother and me. She also suffered from mental illness and chronic disease including congested heart failure and Type-2 diabetes. I discovered my mother dead at the age of 48. She had also suffered a heart attack in her sleep. Years after my mother passed I also learned that she was also sexually abused by someone closed to her.

Heart disease and diabetes have touched multiple members of my family across generations. My brother and I are both Type 2 diabetics. My brother also was diagnosed with congested heart failures. Incarceration has also touched every living generation of my family. Over time I began to discover that I started New Start Project in an attempt to heal from and disrupt the trauma in my own family history. I believed by only helping others that I could heal my own trauma. Alphonso’s death was a trigger and as cataclysmic as the Titanic hitting the iceberg in the middle of the Atlantic. It caused me to want to confront the roots of my own ancestral trauma.

I believe my family cycle of trauma has its roots in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean too. It wasn’t a luxury cruise ship but slave ships from West Africa to the United States. According to the theory of historical trauma in regards to African Americans, the Atlantic Slave Trade created an acute traumatic stressor that resulted in a collective phenomenon that is being transferred to the direct descendants of African slaves.

On a bright summer day in 2016, while working at my desk, I began staring out of my office window. I heard a small still voice say, “It’s time to go to Africa.” I immediately understood this to be a mandate. It was time to face my history.

I believe our life journey is often unclear and the outcome of our life journey is even more uncertain. For me, my assignment at New Start Project had to end. I gave the Board of Directors a three-month notice that I was resigning as Executive Director. My work at helping others had just begun, but I knew I had to heal myself first. My new journey was filled with haze and its outcome even more unclear. However, I knew with every fiber of my being it was the right path to take.

My travel to Africa wasn’t an excursion but the beginning of a journey on a new life assignment. Next, I had to decide where to go in Africa. I had first heard of the Cape Coast Slave Castle in the West African Country of Ghana while watching news coverage in 2009 of then President Obama’s visit to the castle. It was a proud moment for me to see the first African American President standing at the Door of No Return, where millions of slaves made their final exit off the shores of their homeland to board ships headed to America. The news footage of President Obama gave me hope beyond the influence of politics but in the transformative power of reconciliation.

Within three months of my decision to go to Africa, I sold everything including my 10-year-old Ford Focus to sustain me on the trip and I honestly didn’t know if I would return to the United States. On October 5, 2016 I departed Boston Logan Airport headed to Accra, Ghana. I arrived the following day at Kotoko International Airport. The first Ghanaian that I encountered was the immigration officer who checked my passport, visa, and yellow fever card to permit my entry in the country.

The immigration officer was professional and placid in his demeanor. He asked me solemnly, “How long will you be visiting Ghana? Are you visiting as a tourist?” I reluctantly replied, “Yes” to both questions. In actuality, I had no idea when I planned to return to the United States.

My return ticket was 7 months from the date of arrival in Ghana. The immigration officer stamped 60 days on my visa. I had only a guaranteed stay of 60 days on a return ticket that was seven months away. As I approached the baggage claim, I heard live music and the singer gleefully chanted the beautiful lyrics, “Welcome home.” I took a deep breath and nervously approach the baggage claim area and there was no turning back.