What if trauma isn't just something that happened to you, but something your body has been carrying for generations? Adaku Utah offers their perspective on that question in this episode of “TraumaTies.” Born in Baltimore and raised in Nigeria, Adaku is an Igbo, queer, non-binary healer grounded in a lineage of farmers, healers, and community caretakers. They approach healing not as a private endeavor but rather a shared responsibility that lives in our bodies, our relationships, and our lineages.

In this conversation with hosts Bridgette Stumpf and Lindsey Silverberg, Adaku shares personal reflections about singing as their grandmother did and carrying survival wisdom from parents who endured the Biafran Civil War. “I would even argue that all of us have something in us that comes from a people – not just the way that we physically look, but our instincts, the ways that our blood has learned how to congeal, and even from the oceans that we grew around,” Adaku says. Tune in for their insights about how living in a capitalist society creates the “illusion” that our mind and body are separate. Instead, they suggest that “we literally are alive because of the lineages that we come from – not just because somebody gave birth to us and they passed on a set of traits.”

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Brought to you by Volare, TraumaTies: Untangling Societal Harm & Healing After Crime is a podcast that creates space and conversations to dissect the structural and systemic knots that keep us from addressing trauma.

Rooted in a belief that survivors of crime deserve respect for their dignity in the aftermath of victimization, Volare seeks to empower survivors by informing them of all of the options available and working to transform existing response systems to be more inclusive of the diverse needs that survivors often have after crime.

Volare also provides free, holistic, and comprehensive advocacy, therapeutic, and legal services to survivors of all crime types. Visit our website to learn more about how to access our trauma-informed education training and how to partner with us to expand survivor-defined justice.