Emma McAdam (00:00)
Today I have a very special guest. It’s Ashley McGirt-Adair. She’s the founder and president of the Therapy Fund, which helps people who are traditionally marginalized gain access to therapy. She’s a therapist, a TEDx speaker, and an author of two racial trauma and racism on mental health.
And it’s such an important conversation. So I’m very grateful for Ashley giving us some of her valuable time to be here today. Let’s jump in.
All right, Ashley, thank you so much for being here. Really excited to talk about this you.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (00:34)
Super excited to be here with you.
Emma McAdam (00:37)
And I guess I shouldn’t even say excited. It’s unfortunate that we to talk about this, but it’s so important that we talk about the impact of racism on people’s mental health. So grateful for your time, grateful for your work in this area, and I’m excited to highlight that on our channel. can you just start us off? Like how does racism impact mental health? Give us a big picture idea.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (00:58)
Big picture in a short amount of time racism impacts mental health at literally every aspect from mental health to physical health when we’re looking at how it shapes whether people even seek help at all because of the stigma and because of the harm that has been done within the medical system overall on black and brown bodies. You know when we look at the medical apartheid lobotomies that were perfected on native and Indigenous communities misdiagnoses, over diagnosis of Black folks, the way in which Black men will go into a room with the same signs and symptoms of bipolar that’s expressed in a white man and the white male will be diagnosed with bipolar and the Black man is diagnosed with schizophrenia. And this goes back to the civil rights movement. There’s a really great book on it called How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease.
So, this is how we see that it impacts care. Not only does it impact the treatment of care, but it delays access to care when we’re looking at cost barriers. Who has access? Who can afford the co-pays? Who even has adequate health insurance to be able to cover sound, culturally responsive care? And then who are the clinicians that are actually practicing from an anti-oppressive psychotherapeutic lens that even accept insurance?
So then it becomes a private pay thing and do people have the ability to pay $200- $300 a session? Whereas then only wealthy people have access to this. And when we’re looking at black and brown communities, we know that they tend to be impoverished, lower income, have so many socioeconomic factors. And then also when we’re looking at racism in healthcare, know, the burden of the client having to educate the clinician.
Emma McAdam (02:58)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (02:58)
Which this is why I even became a therapist. I wanted to be a lawyer and I found myself at a very young age having to educate the therapist on race relations in America at nine years old, you know? And gosh, I could go on. There’s so many aspects of it, you know, it ignores racial stress as a real source of trauma when we’re looking at racial trauma and the impact that racism has on our mental health.
Emma McAdam (03:02)
Yeah, my gosh. Mm-hmm.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (03:28)
The traditional systems do not see racism as chronic, yet it is and it’s unpredictable, it’s ongoing, and it really affects retention rates, outcome rates, so many different things.
Understanding Racial Trauma
Emma McAdam (03:41)
Holy cow, yeah, such a big impact and it’s so important to understand.
What is racial trauma? How does that impact the nervous system? How does that impact the stress response over time?
Ashley McGirt-Adair (03:49)
Racial trauma is very similar to PTSD, but it differs in that racism is ongoing. Unless there’s some miracle, act of God, or something where racism is gonna end tomorrow, it is still going to happen. And it has an emotional impact, a physical impact. It’s very visceral and it shows up through hypervigilance, anxiety, exhaustion. And basically, it is the reaction that people of color experience in response.
to racism, whether real or perceived, whether they directly experienced it or didn’t. And I say real or perceived because oftentimes as black-bodied, brown-bodied individuals, we question, did this happen because of my race? I got a hoodie on right now. It’s early, I’m tired. You know, I hopped on. Will I be treated or followed around a store because I have a hoodie on? Will I be gunned down in my neighborhood like Trayvon Martin because
I have a hoodie on. And you know, so we question and it’s like, did this really happen? Is it real? it perceived? I think it might be because this happened. And we also know whether I dress up, know, harm still happens when you look at photos of lynchings. These men and women were in three piece suits. They were in their Sunday’s best. So it doesn’t matter whether we have a hoodie on or whether we are dressed to the nines. We still experience this harm and that is racial trauma. And then it’s also secondary when we talk about vicarious trauma. If you hear about it, you see about it, you see these things on the news or it happened to your neighbor. you know, your neighbor just experienced this atrocity because of how they look or your neighbor has a vulgar ⁓ slogan sign painted across their garage and you have to see that and you’re part of that community. So it still impacts you even though maybe that wasn’t your home, or maybe you didn’t know the person but you heard about it, and that stores itself within your body.
The Ongoing Nature of Racism
Emma McAdam (05:57)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So that constant threat perception of like, will I be mistreated? Will I be safe when I’m driving? Will I be safe when I’m jogging? Right? Will I be safe when I’m going to the corner store to get a treat? And it’s like constant stress, constant stress and fear.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (06:17)
Yeah, and there’s so many people where they weren’t safe. Ahmaud Arbery, who was gunned down jogging. I can countless people who went to a corner store and never made their way back home.
Emma McAdam (06:22)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. What would you say to people? I feel like this week, this month, it’s pretty hard to make this claim, but people who might say, well, that was a problem in the past, but it’s not a problem now.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (06:43)
And you know, I get this question often, especially the way in which media tries to portray these things as being so long ago, the black and white photos of Martin Luther King Jr. or the civil rights movement. mean, Reverend Jesse Jackson just passed away a couple days ago. ⁓
Emma McAdam (07:04)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (07:05)
So he was alive. My mother was born in 1966. So she directly experienced all of these things. My great grandmother was one generation removed from slavery. And those things were not that long ago. And when we want to talk about science, you can look at epigenetics and how they did a study of Holocaust survivors.
Emma McAdam (07:11)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (07:35)
They saw how trauma still showed up in the bodies of those whose ancestors had experienced the Holocaust. So if that happened for them, of course, we know that that trauma has been passed down for Black families who experienced the transatlantic slave trade and the things that followed. There has never been any healing after. And then after slavery ended, you’ve got mass incarceration, Jim Crow,
Emma McAdam (07:47)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (08:04)
Redlining, segregation, of these things, systemic oppression. The erasure of our history that is still happening today with the removal of diversity, equity and inclusion and eroding certain books and, you know, banning these books and things and people. So it’s still very present today. It’s not a thing of yesterday. In fact, I would say it’s more profound because we can see it in ways that we didn’t see it in the past. Now that we have cameras, social media,
Emma McAdam (08:30)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (08:41)
All of the things but even social media and the algorithm will ban and limit people’s exposure to the truth.
Stories of Racial Trauma
Emma McAdam (08:50)
Yeah, it’s such, it’s so painful for me to see and ⁓ even I, you know, I’ve attended some training. I’ve certainly tried to familiarize myself with understanding the impacts of racism, but I still feel like pretty inadequate at addressing it, you know, at really understanding experiences like for people of the global majority who have been traditionally called minorities, you know. And it’s pain- it’s so painful for me to see the current political climate that seems to be- like, there are certainly aspects of the current political climate in the United States that are blatantly racist. That’s some people are actively calling out, like on both sides of the aisle. But it’s brutal, it’s just brutal, can’t we move forward? Like can’t we move forward as people?
Ashley McGirt-Adair (09:55)
And that’s the thing people want to move forward without and you can’t move forward without addressing both the past and the present. So, you know, when people say it was just the thing of the past, why are the outcomes still so present in every day? Why is it embedded in our housing and our health care and our education and our criminal justice system? And so until we really deal with those past transgressions, we can’t move forward. And people want to say,
Emma McAdam (10:06)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (10:25)
Stop talking about it. We don’t want to talk about race. We want to hide it. It’s the elephant in the room. You know, I don’t see color. But if you don’t see color, that means you don’t see me.
Emma McAdam (10:32)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You don’t see my actual, my current hurts and my current pain in the present moment. when I say move forward, I mean, can’t we move forward to a place of empathy where we can really see people and listen to their stories and understand them. And I think that requires a lot of us, myself included, to really be willing to question what we think, which is hard. We have a default to like confirmation bias, right? Just, if I think it this way, then I’m going to ignore the evidence otherwise until something really forces me to consider a different perspective. ⁓ yeah. Well, okay. So for thousands of years, for a long time, but especially in the history of the United States with the slave trade and everything.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (11:03)
You
Emma McAdam (11:22)
Entire generations of people have been mistreated and still are being mistreated. That impacts people on a daily level, their stress levels.
Can you give any specific examples or stories from clients or yourself that can demonstrate how racism impacts someone on a micro level?
Ashley McGirt-Adair (11:40)
Yeah, so I just finished writing my book, The Cost of Healing in Silence: Navigating Racial Trauma and the Call for Culturally Responsive Care, and I share several stories in that. One in particular, which I have an entire chapter dedicated to, is on Janelle, who was actually studying social work out here in California, had her entire future ahead of her, and was ignored by the healthcare system. sent home, dismissed, and ultimately would die at home and be found by her family members. Her own father made it to her before the ambulance did. And so when I think about these stories, I think about Janelle, I think about my own grandmother who died extremely young as a result of a stroke. She experienced a brain bleed and she was sent home by her medical provider. They didn’t contact any family. give her anything, any tips or tools or what to do. They just said you know hey you got this brain bleed I’m gonna discharge you go home whatever.
Emma McAdam (12:48)
What?
Ashley McGirt-Adair (12:49)
And the same thing. This was in the 90s. and here we are 2026 and it actually happened last year 2025. Jamie Foxx experienced the same thing and he was sent home with a brain bleed. This is a multimillionaire comedian actor and he details the story on his Netflix stand up. What had happened was where he shares the story, which is very similar to my grandmother.
Emma McAdam (12:52)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (13:18)
Like my grandmother, Jamie Foxx, survives to tell the story. And I bring him up not to highlight his celebrity, but because these things happen, no matter where you are on the economic spectrum, whether you’re a Serena Williams or Beyonce, who both experienced problems while giving birth to their babies. And we see how they were dismissed and all of the things that happened with black women. the increased mortality rates when black women are giving birth. And so these are some of the stories that I talk about in my book, the stories that I’ve experienced within my own family, within my own health and with my own life. And these show up on a daily basis. When I put out the notice on social media that I was writing a book about the impact of racial trauma in healthcare, dozens upon dozens of people sent me messages sharing with me their stories.
Emma McAdam (14:16)
My goodness. and to summarize those, I’m gonna guess here what you’re hearing, and you have more data than I do, but that people are not listened to, they’re dismissed, they’re misdiagnosed at higher rates than white people.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (14:31)
Exactly, exactly. And our mortality rates, you know, where you’re dying at disproportionate rates in comparison to our white counterparts, which can be contributed to systemic racism, oppression. did hospice therapy for a number of years and I saw two very different life expectancies from my white patients who would be living well into their hundreds and my black and brown patients who would be dying very young. My very last hospice patients
Emma McAdam (14:45)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (15:01)
Was a 23 year old black woman who I sat at the bedside and watched her pass away from preventable disease. You know, all of these things that take a toll on our body. And when I look at her life and her family members, her brother was murdered by the police in Federal Way, Washington, and just so much trauma upon trauma that she carried at such a young age. She was only 23 by the time I met her and by the time she left this earth. And there’s countless stories like this of the people that I served and you see two very different stark outcomes from Black community members and our white counterparts doing part to the impact that racism has not only on our mental health, our physical health, but our overall lifespan.
Emma McAdam (15:49)
Yeah, yeah. even saw something the other day where they just recently, like the Dermatology Society, whoever, just barely released like a how to identify skin cancer in black skin. And it’s like 2025. They’re like, finally like, by the way, like this is what these skin disorders look like on black people. Because all the training that people and doctors have been given for like hundreds of years is just with white skin. And that’s it. Like people were just not trained on treating this huge percentage of the population.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (16:24)
I mean, just recently in 2020 during the whole Black Lives Matter movement, George Floyd is the first time we got brown band-aids. So my entire life, I did not have wound care that matched my skin. And when I was 18, 19 years old, I went to Thailand for the first time and I think it was probably mosquito bites scratching myself till I bled. Those dang mosquitoes over there in And I needed a band-aid and I went to the store, the corner store,
Emma McAdam (16:37)
Mm-hmm. Hahaha
Ashley McGirt-Adair (16:54)
and that Band-Aids were dark. They had a variety of shades and that was the very first time in my life I ever had a Band-Aid that matched my complexion. And, you know, that wasn’t brought up to the mainstream until 2020 when we had this global pandemic with exacerbated racial stressors. So when we’re talking about these things that are just now being addressed, the thing as very simple as a bandaid that never matched dark skin. I had to wear pale complexion. You know, lighter tone band-aids until I went to Thailand and now, present day, where they’re available.
Emma McAdam (17:34)
People might think, that’s such a small thing, like you shouldn’t worry about it, but that messaging over and over and over again says like you’re not the default, you’re different, like the world is made for white folk and you just don’t fit that or something, right?
Ashley McGirt-Adair (17:47)
Yeah, and it can be devastating, especially for a small child. And you know, I remember just like falling around, getting bruises, all kinds of things, just playing outside and having this thing that really stood out. And then it brings more attention to yourself. First, the Band-Aid that I had in Thailand, you couldn’t even tell.
Effects of Racial Trauma on Self Esteem and Self Worth
Emma McAdam (17:53)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that’s it’s crazy. I think in America, we like to think we have things pretty much figured out. And then, like, it’s clear to see there’s so many areas we still need to like really listen and learn and grow.
So how would you say like racial trauma impacts identity and self-worth?
Ashley McGirt-Adair (18:27)
And in so many ways we see this is when you’re growing up in an environment where you don’t see yourself, there’s a lack of representation of people who look like you in every aspect. I didn’t have a black teacher until I went to college. And that’s because I went to a historically black college and university. Aside from my grandmother, who was a teacher for over 25 years, she taught me in many ways, but in my actual education system, elementary, middle, high school, I never once had a black teacher until I went to college. And that does something to your psyche. If you don’t see yourself in these roles. I told you earlier, I actually wanted to be a lawyer. And that’s because the first black lawyer I saw was Johnny Cochran. And I remember watching the OJ trial and just being so enamored with this man, who I had never seen in a court system who’s not being judged.
Emma McAdam (19:05)
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (19:27)
while OJ was on trial and another black man, but seeing a black man represent him, like, I want to do that. I want to be able to, do that, work within the criminal justice system and all of these different things. And that idea didn’t implant in my mind until I saw somebody. While he was a man, he was a black man. And I’m like, if he could do it, maybe I could do it.
Emma McAdam (19:48)
Hm. Hm.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (19:49)
And so that is how racial trauma impacts our identity, how we see ourselves. That’s why we see a lot of internalized oppression. A lot of folks who may be black or brown and they hate themselves and they uphold systems of white supremacy because they haven’t been taught to love themselves. And, if you don’t see yourself as as beautiful or in certain lights, then you’re going to have a negative impact. There’s a really good book I actually have, “What the Children Told Us,” which talks about the history of the doll studies with Kenneth and Mamie Clark, where they actually take two dolls, a black doll and a white doll, and they show it to children and they ask them, who’s smarter, who’s prettier? They ask, you know, certain questions that attribute positive things and negative things. And everyone points to the white doll as smarter, prettier, even the black kids.
99 % of them chose the white doll. And then when they asked the children, especially the black children, which doll looks most like you? You know, many of them start to cry because they realize they just attributed all of these negative attributes to the doll that looks most like them. But how did they learn that? Who taught them that they were less than?
Understanding Perspectives and Cultural Exposure
Emma McAdam (21:09)
Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, well, in all the movies and TVs where the hero is white and there’s no black representation, right? The system that consistently disadvantages people of color, right?
Ashley McGirt-Adair (21:25)
Yeah, and you know, we’ve witnessed the dehumanization of an entire population of people that still plays out today. We just had the current president compare the former president and his wife to apes.
Emma McAdam (21:41)
Yeah, that is completely just mind-blowing, unacceptable, just cannot even wrap my head around it.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (21:50)
And this is a centuries old argument when we look at the evolution theory and how a lot of racist individuals used evolution to say that black people were the least evolved and we were closest to apes.
Racism Awareness and Racial Trauma Awareness and Education
Emma McAdam (22:04)
Yeah, no, yeah, it’s just unacceptable. It’s completely unacceptable. And we gotta do better. We gotta do better. And it’s interesting because I feel like, ⁓ so for those of us who are white, like, I feel like it’s harder. We need to do the work. We’re responsible to do our work, to learn and to understand other people’s perspective. And it’s hard. I’m not trying to say like we’re disadvantaged. I’m saying like it takes a lot of intentional effort to do this work. so like I went to a high school, had 1500 kids in three grades. So 500 kids per grade. We had one black kid in my high school and he was in an adoptive family. So he had white parents. And I just did not get the opportunity. to hang out with a lot of black folk. There were quite a few Latinos in my school, but I just feel like, do you have recommendations? It’s not your job to educate us, but please do, if you’re willing.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (23:14)
Well, you can start with reading my book. The perfect start that really helps people move from awareness to healing and having the education and understanding, especially if you’re a clinician, but it’s written for everyone, not just mental health professionals. And I write it from two different lenses. And I actually have reflection prompts and tools and tips for both the everyday person just living through this thing called life as well as therapists who actually may be treating and eventually encounter people of color.
Understand some people, you know, they operate in a bubble and they may not ever actually experience working with black or brown folks, but in the event that you do so that you have the skills to truly be culturally responsive. And I understand the privilege that I carry and my ability to travel. I’ve been to over 60 different countries. And yeah, I’m a very avid traveler. My first book was actually called, I Tried to Travel It Away: Mental Health Tips for Travelers. Yes.
Emma McAdam (24:06)
Whoa, that’s awesome. I saw that, I saw that. was like, that sounds great, let’s go, let’s just run away.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (24:16)
Right, right. And that’s why I wrote it because we were always trying to run away from our problems, know, especially millennials catch flights, not feelings It’s like, you got to deal with the problems because they’re going to meet you when you come right back home. But I say that to say through traveling, I’ve experienced so many cultures and communities that I had never heard of. Me and my husband, we went to Honduras, a small area over there called Roatan, a small island off of Honduras. And I learned about the Garifuna people. I had never ….
Emma McAdam (24:25)
Hahaha
Ashley McGirt-Adair (24:47)
in my life heard of them and it’s a group of Africans who migrated freely. They chose to move on their own, not through enslavement. And they built this community on the Isle of Punta Gora and they kept their traditions, their food, their language and they are revered. They’re very, very dark skinned over there. They speak both Spanish and their other language. And it was really fascinating to just learn, you know, that there’s a group of people from Africa. We move all the time. I go back and forth from, I live in both Seattle and San Diego. I’ve lived in Atlanta and you know, it wasn’t through force that I chose to leave these places and we don’t often talk about the folks in Africa who chose to just migrate or leave without a force through enslavement and they built this community and I would have never heard of them or learned about them had I not been to Honduras and visited Roatan, which of course I understand the cost and the privilege of my ability to be able to travel, but you also can go to your local library. You can watch documentaries, films, read books by people who do not look like you and expose yourself, especially if you’re in a community that looks just like you. I’ve been also very privileged to live in very diverse communities. I’ve lived in extremely white, predominantly white communities where I was the only black person in the area. And I’ve also lived in communities, where you’ve got Russians, Ethiopians, Somalians, know, everywhere where I bought my first home, it was literally labeled the most diverse small town in the entire United States. And it was like a mini, we call it a mini United Nations. So there was everybody there. Yeah.
Emma McAdam (26:31)
Wow, that’s awesome. Mm-hmm. That’s cool. Well, my kid’s school is a DLI school, so we have, I think it’s got to be at least 45 % minority, where we’ve got a lot of Portuguese speakers and a lot of Spanish speakers, and I love it. And we have these cultural celebrations, and my kids are learning multiple languages, and they’re like just surrounded with different languages and different cultures. And I’m so grateful for that chance. I’m still in Utah where we are predominantly white. But I’m grateful that my kids get that chance to be diverse. But yeah, for me, when I moved to the West Bank when I was 16, my eyes were open to just like, oh, like people have completely different experiences than I do. And I think you’re right, like travel, reading, this is where social media can be so terrible, is that we often just see more of what we already see. And I wish there were ways to make it little easier for us to see other perspectives, because I know for me I was very humbled after George Floyd was killed, I was very humbled to read so many stories from so many people experiencing things so differently than I had. And I am embarrassed to admit it was the first time I’d ever considered that like I have never felt threatened by a police officer. I’ve never thought when I was getting pulled over that I had to be really careful or I might get shot. Like I’ve never had to worry about that. And that’s why that’s privilege, right? Like that is racial privilege that I’ve experienced. And I’d never considered that until I just read story after story in 2020.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (28:04)
Yeah, and so we have to be intentional with exposing ourselves to other cultures and communities. And you’re right, we are in this real bubble with social media where it just shows you things similar to the net.
Steps Toward Mental Health Improvement and Healing After Racial Trauma
Emma McAdam (28:08)
Yeah, that you already believe. Yeah, so okay, so exposing ourselves to new cultures, taking the time to go out of your way, read books, read stories, read experiences, watch other people’s stories. for those who have experienced, you know, racist abuse, racial trauma.
Can you outline some steps for healing or maybe healing isn’t the right word? Making steps toward action or mental health improvement.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (28:48)
I’ll answer both of those things because there’s two very different steps to both healing and to the action. So the step toward healing is one naming it. We start here having these conversations, naming the experience. know, racism is a very real present thing that’s happening. It’s not a thing of the past. Just because it may not impact you directly does not mean it’s not impacting your neighbor or someone else in a community, maybe not too far from you. And we have to
Emma McAdam (28:55)
Yeah.Yeah.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (29:18)
The impact on the body, mind, and break free from that silence. Find culturally responsive support. Reclaim our rest, our boundaries, our joy. The world can be quite chaotic, but it can also be filled with so much joy and love, and it’s important for us to lean in on that and lean into collective healing. And then when we talk about action, I think it’s important for us to commit to doing one thing. Oftentimes, you know, we hope things are going to change. We hope things will get different. Obama ran an entire campaign on hope. And when we hope we remove ourselves from the action because we think somebody else will do it. I travel all the time as I mentioned when I’m on a plane. I hope the pilot will fly me safely to my destination. I hope the weather is going be okay. These things are all outside of my control. I cannot control the weather. I don’t know anything about aviation and I cannot fly a plane. So when we move from hope to commitment and we see ourselves as an agent of change and not somebody who can’t do a thing. We like to say people like Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, Ida B. Wells that these were extraordinary individuals and I don’t want to take from them because they are amazing,
not extraordinary. They were normal, everyday humans who decided to act, who decided to commit to a thing and make a change. And we all can commit to just one thing. It can be something small. You don’t have to star big, you don’t have to go out with a picket and rally and all of the things, but you can do something intentional that you yourself can do, as opposed to hoping it’s going to get better and hoping someone else will fix it.
Examples of Addressing Racism
Emma McAdam (31:19)
Can you give some concrete examples?
Ashley McGirt-Adair (31:22)
Yeah, you can share this conversation. You can read a book, watch a film, have a conversation with your neighbor. You can speak up when you see harm being done. When you see someone discriminating against another being, you could say, that is not right. You treated me this way, but you treated them another way. You asked me nothing. You’re asking them for their ID, their social security number, their birth certificate, but you didn’t ask
Emma McAdam (31:36)
Mm-hmm.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (31:52)
me that. Why are you doing it to this person? What is it that’s different about them? Question. When you make people answer and think about their actions, then they’re in a position to hmmm.
Why did I do that? Why did I question this black or brown person in a way I did not question the white person? I have a very mixed family. My brother’s half white. I’ve got cousins, Asian, white, alike. And I remember growing up and being out with my brother’s white father. They would assume I was the adopted black child. Nobody knew what my brother was. They were always asking me, what is he? What is he? Like, what do mean? He’s human. What are you asking me?
Emma McAdam (32:10)
Right. Yeah, like
Ashley McGirt-Adair (32:34)
They don’t want a name
Emma McAdam (32:35)
What?
Ashley McGirt-Adair (32:36)
that they want to figure out what is he mixed with? Why does he look the way that he looks? And they want me to answer it so they’ll never ask my brother but they’ll ask me. And just the way in which I watched how his father, a white man,
Emma McAdam (32:40)
Yeah.
Ashley McGirt-Adair (32:52)
was treated when we navigated certain spaces and how my white uncles were treated or how my black mom was treated. It was very, very different. We navigated the world very differently. And then add on that layer when they see him with black children or a black spouse at the time when he was married to my mother, the way in which he was treated because interracial marriage was not really a thing at that time in the nineties when they were together. And it has
my brother, to this very day, he struggles with substance use and I see how many of his experiences led to that because of the way this world treated him and was so confused by his utter existence and did not see his humanity and didn’t know how to treat him. Is he black? Is he white? What is he? Is he Samoan? You know, they would always question and ask me, his black sister, what’s up with him?
Finding Safe Spaces from Racial Trauma
Emma McAdam (33:39)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh man. It’s still so sad. So how it’s, it’s, it’s hurt. It just hurts that this still exists.
And do you have, do you have advice for people who like are actively experiencing? Like, can you, can you heal or regain a sense of health? Like, I guess here’s the question. For those of us just watching the news and seeing how painful the world is and our country is right now, what do you do about it? What do you encourage people to do if it’s not putting their head in the sand? What is it? What do we do about this?
Ashley McGirt-Adair (34:34)
Well, one, limit your dose of exposure. You don’t have to consume everything. You don’t have to watch every video. And you will still find out what’s going on in the world and you’ll be informed. I think a lot about the Amish community and how they showed up during the George Floyd protests. I don’t know who flew a kite to their community and let what was going on if they’re not supposed to be watching television and all of these things. But even they were outraged. So I say if
Emma McAdam (34:55)
Ha
Ashley McGirt-Adair (35:04)
Amish community can find out what’s going on, you’ll find out. You don’t have to watch everything. know, pay attention to your body because racial trauma shows up physically. Your chest tightens. You’ll have headaches, fatigue, trouble sleeping, irritability, all of these things. And it is so important for you to really give yourself permission to pause. Stay connected with your community. Build a community. Forge a community where you can have positive conversations. You know, you can’t heal while you’re constantly being activated, while you’re constantly being exposed. So it’s important to find safe spaces where you can do that. And practice grounding and regulation. I do a form of progressive muscle relaxation every morning before I wake up and before I go to sleep. I have a high bed, so my feet will just automatically go into position and I’ll start doing progressive muscle relaxation.
I also do tapping, somatic therapy, and all of these things help us forge a path toward healing and wellness. And most importantly, you know, seeking support when it’s needed. Finding a good, culturally responsive clinician who has an awareness and an understanding of how racism impacts our mind, our body, our spirit.
And these are some of the things that we can do, you know, join a book club if you like reading or a movie club. If you’re into movies and maybe you don’t like reading or listen to audio books, all of these different things, go outside, ground yourself in the earth. There are so many different aspects. And I just gave a whole long list. If you only do one thing, that is okay. You don’t have to do everything on the list. can take it small, one step at a time.
Resources for Mental Health and Community Support
Emma McAdam (37:06)
That’s awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Is there anything you wished I had asked you or anything you feel like you just really want to say before we wrap things up?
Ashley McGirt-Adair (37:15)
I think you asked really great questions. Let’s see, if you are curious and interested in learning more about these things, I would also share that I host an annual reclaiming wellness conference every July during BIPOC mental health awareness month. It’s the only one on the entire West Coast that is dedicated toward improving mental health outcomes for communities of color. If you’re a clinician, you can get continuing education credits. If you are a community member, you’re welcome just to come and learn about some of these things. So that’s really important. I also founded the Therapy Fund Foundation, an organization that’s dedicated toward eliminating barriers to healing. We provide free therapy to Black and other historically excluded communities. We have a scholarship fund, peer support, and we do a wide variety of things.
Emma McAdam (38:11)
That’s awesome. That’s so good to know. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for your work in this area. It’s so needed and really appreciate you taking the time to come tell my audience about it.
