Excerpt from Healing Connections: A Community Approach to Childhood Trauma and Attachment, Chapter 15: Cultural Connections – A collective work by Daryle Conquering Bear Crow, Gaelin Elmore, Zachary Fried, Mary Lyons, Araceli Salcedo, Dannette R. Smith, Chauncey Strong and Tracey Wells-Huggins, compiled and edited by Sue Badeau. Excerpt from page 288 and pages 293-95.

Culture, heritage, and history shape our world view. They shape how we think and feel about ourselves and how we interact with the larger world around us. Although secure attachment is a result of our relationship with individual people (starting with parents, specifically mothers and then branching out to our other significant and intimate relationships) our larger sense of identity, self-worth, and place in the world hinges on a sense of belonging, the opposite of loneliness. Research has demonstrated that a deep core sense of belonging is as important to human development as other core essentials of life such as food, shelter, and safety. (Allen, et al. 2021).

Children who have experienced grief, loss, attachment ruptures and trauma often feel a distinct sense of social isolation and rejection, questioning how or where they fit in. This lack of a true sense of belonging will, in turn, hinder their capacity to form secure attachments and heal from trauma. Children of color are doubly impacted as they experience not only the individual sense of loss, but also the impact of both institutional and systemic racism and individual prejudices or biases.

It is when we are willing to explore, encounter and process this world together on a journey with our children towards fully embracing their identity and experiencing true belonging within not only the family but also with their heritage and culture, that we can be at our best as parents and professionals and provide a sense of both belonging and cultural permanence to our children.

Cultural permanency:

Cultural permanency is a concept coined by Chauncey Strong that helps us understand the need for young people to have continual connection to their traditions, their race, their ethnicity, their language, their religion – all these pieces are things that will help them deal with trauma and loss.

Optimal human development and well-being occur within the context of our very earliest relationships. These relationships do not exist in a vacuum, but rather are rooted in the context of family, community, culture, and history creating a child’s sense of place and rootedness. There are, of course, many ways to experience belonging, within one’s family, neighborhood, school, workplace, community of faith, sports team, and so on. However, two of the most powerful ways to experience belonging are through one’s culture and place. Physical place, that is homeland or birthplace, has particular significance to indigenous peoples around the world.

Some children experience separation from their culture, from their family, from their birthplace, possibly from their race, language, or religion. This frequently adds to their sense of isolation and loneliness and increases the impact of the trauma that they have experienced. Some will try to assuage this loss by doing everything they can to fit in, to adapt to and to belong in the new community and culture. While others will carry a deep longing to be reconnected with their cultural roots. They may go to great lengths to feel that sense of belonging, including changing their name back to a name from their culture, seeking friends, peers and adult mentors from their culture, and choosing hair styles, clothing, language, music, and food preferences based on their perception of their culture.

And still others, as Allen et al, (Allen, et al., 2021) have phrased it, who have been disenfranchised, have suffered abuse or trauma, or have been ostracized or rejected may look for alternative (and frequently less healthy or satisfying) sources for belonging including participation in gangs, cults or socially or politically radicalized organizations.

For most non-white people, racial and cultural identity development is an ongoing, arduous, and intentional process whereby individuals need to remind themselves that no matter how others perceive them, ultimately, they will need to define who they are. This requires development of cultural skills which include understanding one’s heritage, mindful acknowledgement of place, and a sense of consistency between one’s inner sense of self and outward presentation to the world. Social, emotional, and cultural competencies complement and reinforce one another, and contribute to and are reinforced by feeling a sense of belonging. (Allen et al 2021)

Allen, et al. (2021) identified four important components necessary for the development of a healthy sense of belonging. These are:

1. Competency – skills and abilities necessary to connect to people and places.
2. Opportunity – how often you are exposed to people and places.
3. Motivation – internal drive to belong.
4. Perception – how past experiences influence all three of the components above

Gaelin Elmore has used this framework as a foundation for much of his work on the central necessity of belonging for children who have been impacted by separation, loss, grief, trauma and/or involvement with the child welfare system. He notes that the first two components – competency and opportunity – are external factors, while the remaining two – motivation and perception – internal factors. Caregivers and other adults in the lives of children and teens often focus on the internal factors. Is this youth motivated to belong? Does this young person perceive (or understand) how they can and do belong within the family, school, or community? If the answer to either of these questions appears to be “no” then effort and energy is focused on improving the child’s motivation and their perception. The goal becomes changing how they can think differently, how they can apply themselves, how they can connect. Yet, when the child’s background includes attachment losses, separations and trauma, the focus on internal factors can be self-defeating.

On the other hand, when adults support the youth in creating opportunities and developing necessary skills, strategies, and competencies for connection, they can begin to experience success and this success will, in turn influence their internal capacities. So rather than focusing on questions of motivation and perception, questions to ask are how can we assist this young person in building social competency? Can we give them opportunities to connect in meaningful ways to their culture, community, place? Does my child lack the ability to connect with people, places, things, or ideas? Do they struggle to be active in a group or environment or community of people? Focus building those skills, and then give them opportunities over time to experience success.

For children in transracial foster or adoptive families, there is an added layer as they try to figure out who they are based not only on what they look like or how they are identified in society, but also by a sense of connection (or lack of connection) to family. Adoptees often describe a sense of loneliness, not fitting into either the world of their history and heritage nor the world of the family of experience. Internally they may be asking themselves, “Should I be stepping into one part of who I am more than the other so that my identity seems to make sense to those around me?”

Footnote: Allen, K. A., Kern, M. L., Rozek, C. S., & Slavich, G. M. (2021). Belonging: A review of conceptual issues, an integrative framework, and directions for future research. Australian Journal of Psychology, 73(1), 87-102. https://doi.org/10.1080/00049530.2021.1883409