What Stress Did to Our Mothers, It’s Still Doing to Us

Trauma reshapes the brain, rewires the womb, and kills us in silence. This is the science they don’t give us.

Let me ask you something.

Do you know what your mother was going through when she was pregnant with you?

I mean, really, what did she survive?

Was she safe? Was she held? Was she heard? Or was she dodging eviction, choking on secrets, bleeding in bathrooms alone, or trying to hold it together in a clinic where they told her “it’s all in your head”?

Because here's what we know now: the nervous system doesn’t forget. Not hers. Not yours. Not the baby’s.

Black women are more likely to die during pregnancy, birth, or postpartum than any other group in America. That part’s not up for debate. But the numbers you see don’t tell the full truth, because the CDC does not count suicide or homicide in maternal death statistics (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2022). That means if a Black woman takes her own life six weeks postpartum, she’s not counted. If she’s killed by an abusive partner while still bleeding from childbirth, she’s not counted. If she dies of a heart attack at 28 because of long-term birth trauma that was never treated, she’s not counted. This is not data. This is erasure.