Kamri “Kam” Moses is 17 and from West Baltimore. She’s a senior and Class President at Western High School, a Healing Youth Alliance Ambassador, HeartSmiles Heartbeat, Living Classrooms peer mentor—in short, a super leader among, and advocate for, Baltimore’s youth.

She talked to us about youth trauma and healing.

“My personal trauma probably is not as bad as other youth’s that I know about, but the trauma that I experience is kind of like a cycle.”

She talks about generational curses. And she wants to open adults’ eyes.

“Because my mom or dad may have been through a certain trauma, it affects how they may parent me. Lots of times certain traumas aren’t acknowledged, they go untouched, like they didn’t take the time to heal those traumas. So it’s not that it gets taken out on me in a bad way, but certain things that I think could have been done better are a result of those traumas they’ve been through but just haven’t dealt with.”

Her dad lost his dad and has been in multiple car accidents.

“But he just gets up the next day and does things like normal. If I didn’t know about mental health in the way I do now, I wouldn’t pick up on those cycles of trauma and healing. I really want to break through that and talk…

“There are a lot of generational curses out there. Parents have been through things. They’ve seen things, like people getting killed, which sometimes results in parents being overprotective in things they do and we don’t know why—like, don’t go outside and don’t be around certain people…There’s kind of a lack of understanding. A lot of times adults don’t like touching on certain topics. What I want to let them know is if they share their experiences, their child or other youth they share with can learn from that trauma and know what to do and what not to do to prevent those experiences from ever happening. If you don’t speak about it, how would I ever know?

“I say to my dad, ‘Why do you feel like you always just have to keep things down?” 

“A lot of people are like, ‘What happens in the house stays in the house.’ That’s not something that should go on. That’s a generational curse.”

Then there are the chronic traumas, Kam says, that bind Baltimore’s young people.

“For children in Baltimore, it’s like we all have a chronic trauma. It’s long-lasting and it often repeats itself. We’re known as one of the most violent cities in America. We hear gunshots every day, or every other day. So even though we might kind of get desensitized to it, we all have that trauma and that kind of like connects us. Everyone has been connected to someone that has been murdered by gun violence or different things and we all have that.

“And because we’re in a Black community—and that’s not to say that white people and other races don’t pass down generational trauma—but we all have faced that generational trauma. 

“For me personally now, I’m kind of so used to hearing stories about people getting shot or things like that, I feel bad but at the same time I don’t cry every time I hear that someone got killed. It’s kind of something to expect. It shouldn’t be that way, but it is. 

“It affects us in all categories…

”Say a youth may have been touched at home, a lot of times it causes them to lash out in school as far as behavior, and lots of times adults don’t ask, you know, ‘What happened? or ‘Why are you feeling a certain way?’ It’s like people just get punished for acting out when really they’re acting out because they don’t know what to do at home and how to say what’s going on at home. People should look out for those signals.”

Last summer, Kam and six other Healing Youth Alliance Ambassadors were trained in peer healing over 10 weeks by social workers. Now they are presenting to and training others on how to talk to young people about trauma. And now Kam can see a future path for herself.

“I was in awe that we were being talked to and trained by Black people. A lot of times when we think about mental health, I automatically think about a white lady in an office sitting in a chair and writing notes down, stuff like that…

“We got taught by the Black Mental Health Alliance. I thought, ‘This is powerful. If they can do it, we can do it, too.’ We’re young right now, but when we get older we will be able to teach this to the next generation and really make a change. We can do it, too, being Black. That was kind of really shocking to me. It was like, ‘We know stuff, too.’ I know we know stuff, but it was different being taught by Black people, and them really sharing their passion and telling their stories about certain things was eye-opening. It was like, ‘We have the opportunity to do this when we grow up.’

“During the training I thought about how I can go back and talk to my friends. Instead of saying, ‘What’s wrong with you?’, saying ‘What’s going on with you?’ It’s kind of like changing the language so people are more open to talking about their traumas. I learned a better lingo—and I learned what I was doing wrong.”