Fighters can be made, but they can be born, too.

Trauma is my baseline. Typical. I’m a Black American female. Trauma is in my DNA. Trauma like the verbal and emotional assault on Kentaji Brown Jackson or the convoluted humiliation of Jada Pinkett Smith. Or Trauma like, you know, chattel slavery.

“Research has shown that the effects of trauma can be intergenerationally passed on through epigenetic mechanisms, such as methylation (264). Specifically, childhood trauma has been associated with alteration in methylation patterns in human sperm, which may induce intergenerational effects.”