Fascinating article, Julia. I think I'll read a little more from Dr. Bakari.

When I was seven, my parents moved me from a place (Brooklyn) where I was thriving and settled about 50 miles farther east, in a place I affectionately referred to as The Gulag.

The suffocating quiet of that new and better place sucked the air out of my life and left me gasping for the next 7 years.

I'm still coming to terms with the isolation and ridding myself of the coping mechanisms I adopted to survive.

Trauma is not always phsyical or sexual. Great and sudden change that lowers one's sense of survival hurts. This stuff is very real to me. Thank you.