Relievers and grievers gathered inside Foxwoods Resort Casino Thursday for a conference seeking to tackle generational trauma.
Tribal elder Nafeezah Shabazz said she was urged by relatives in the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation to go and pray with attendees.
“When the ladies were speaking, I just felt complete,” Shabazz said.
Shabazz’s nephew, Vincent, was killed in a shooting six years ago.
“I’m not all alone. There [are] people that are going through the same thing, who understand, and [are] people I can relate to.”
The conference, “Healing the Generations,” was put on by the non-profit Clifford Beers Community Care Center and the Mashantucket Pequots.
It was billed by the center as a way to explore “the transformative power of community and healing.”
Michele Scott, the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nations Health & Human Services committee chairwoman, said the conference was an effort to match members of the tribal nation with clinical care that ties in holistic healing.
“It is the same as checking your blood pressure. It is the same as checking your weight when you go into your primary care doctor – those are things that are normalized,” Scott said.
Scott said the conference gave attendees a chance to hear about historical trauma and intergenerational trauma.
“Those are facts. And we do have to deal with it and name it,” Scott said. “But now we’re coming into a space of community, where we’re talking about: How are we going to heal and be strong?”
“We’re not just resilient survivors,” she said, “but we’re thriving.”
Unpacking ‘grief mythology’
The conference provided sessions on everything from how to use public and private funds to ways to build better, self-healing communities.
It also unpacked “grief mythology.”
That play on words of “Greek mythology” was part of a takedown of the presumptive psychology shared by average Americans that aren’t trauma-informed. It came during a breakout session Isaiah Marquez-Greene hosted with his mother Nelba.
The Marquez-Greenes talked about a traditional “two-legged stool” survivors sit on. Instead, they said, survivors should be propped up on a three-legged one where approaches like normalizing and integrating grief are met with equity and opportunity, using research and resources to mitigate trauma. Partnership and policy must also play a role to address injustice and challenge systems, the pair said.
“When I think of that, I think of how I grew up – the ways people treated me and the conversations I’ve had with people who are both trauma-informed and non-trauma-informed,” Isaiah Marquez-Greene said.
Isaiah survived the Sandy Hook School shooting when he was eight. It’s the mass shooting on Dec. 14, 2012 where six educators and 20 kids, including Isaiah’s little sister, Ana, were killed.
“It’s still a lot of the same feelings as it was on day one as it is on year 14 now. As I’ve grown up, my community has really helped me. I’ve really been able to lean on them and draw a lot of inspiration to them,” he said.
Isaiah’s now a third-year psychology student in college, who actually wants to be a hockey agent.“I love hockey. I used to live in Winnipeg and I lived there right when their old hockey team, the Jets, came back one of the years I was living there, so I got to experience a hockey town [getting] their hockey team back and that’s what made me fall in love with hockey,” he said.
That, and how NHL teams like the New York Rangers, have treated the Marquez-Greenes in the years since the shooting.
His mother, Nelba, is in the middle of a run of podcast interviews with fellow survivors of gun violence called “Shared Humanity” that she hosts for the Yale School of Public Health. She’s the one perfecting the “three-legged stool” approach. It’s all in the work she’s done before and after Ana died, as a licensed marriage and family therapist.
During the question-and-answer portion of the Marquez-Greene presentation, Nelba was asked about grief. How long would it last?
“I can only speak for myself. And for me, it does not end,” Nelba said.
That question came from Nafeezah Shabazz, the tribal elder, whose nephew Vincent was killed in a shooting.
“I agreed with her,” Shabazz said. “It’s like an ongoing battle for me. I feel alone when I think about him because we were really close.”
Through the pain, Shabazz said she does try to be joyful. That there is healing to be had in an event like “Healing the Generations” because she feels “seen” as an Indigenous woman who’s experienced trauma.
