Today many of us are part of a generation trying to ‘live our best life’ but no one can tell us how, exactly. So we pretend. And then when that doesn’t work we hear stuff like: ‘I feel “triggered” and need to find “safe places” from “toxic positivity” to be able to “feel my feels”.’ And this perspective doesn’t even begin to venture into the systemic, historical factors that leave whole communities at the receiving end of injustice and oppression. As the writer Resmaa Menakem points out: ‘Trauma in a people, decontextualized over time, looks like culture.’14 It’s enough to trigger you into an
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