The Silent Weight We Carry – How Racism Lives in the Body, Mind & Spirit
- Brainz Magazine
- Nov 27
- 4 min read
Stacey Lynelle is a spiritual empowerment coach, author, and visionary devoted to helping souls heal, awaken, and reclaim divine purpose. Through her coaching, teachings, and Empowerment Series, and being the host of Social Seeds podcast, Stacey empowers others to rediscover their light, transform pain into wisdom, and live in alignment.
Racism is not just an external injustice, it is an internal burden many of us learned to carry long before we ever had words for it. As a community, we have mastered the art of functioning while wounded. But functioning is not the same as healing.
When I speak about mental health, I speak from a place of deep truth, racism is a mental health crisis. Not because our minds or spirits are weak, but because the systems surrounding us were never built to honor our wholeness.
Racism as a constant nervous system activation
Many of us grew up on alert, watching our tone, measuring our words, adjusting our brilliance, and reading the room before we were ever allowed to be children. That kind of vigilance follows us into adulthood.
Each act of racism, subtle or blatant, activates the body’s stress alarm. The shoulders tense. The breath shortens. The mind prepares to defend.
This repeated cycle of activation eventually becomes chronic stress, leading to:
Anxiety
Depression
Sleep disturbances
Emotional exhaustion
And yet, because we are so accustomed to surviving, we often dismiss these symptoms as “just life.”
Microaggressions: The soft-spoken violence
People often underestimate the emotional labor required to endure microaggressions. What they call “small comments,” we feel in our chest, in our spirit, in the spaces where our self-worth lives.
A quick assumption about our professionalism. A question about our hair or our competency.
A dismissive look that says you do not belong here.
These tiny cuts accumulate. Over time, they convince some of us that shrinking is safer than shining.
When society tries to rewrite your identity
Internalized racism is rarely named, but many of us have met it. It sounds like second-guessing your brilliance. It feels like needing to overachieve to justify your place. It looks like playing small so others do not feel threatened.
But there is a sacred power in reclaiming our identity, in honoring our lineage, in remembering that our existence is not accidental, it is divine.
Healing requires cultural grounding
We heal differently because we have been wounded differently.
Culturally rooted healing, therapy with practitioners who see us, meditation, grounding rituals, storytelling, movement, and community care help us release what was never ours to carry.
Healing from racism is not just personal work, it is generational repair. When one of us heals, we interrupt the cycle for those who come after us.
When the system wounds the spirit: A truth about racism, discrimination, and our mental wellness
There is a difference between struggling with mental health and struggling because the world keeps placing unnecessary weight on your shoulders. Many of us are not battling personal failures, we are responding to systems that were built without us in mind.
This is why we must tell the truth, racism is a direct assault on mental wellness. It shapes how we see ourselves, how we navigate the world, and how we learn to protect our joy.
The emotional cost of being “othered”
From childhood, many of us received messages that we were “too much” of something and “not enough” of something else. Our hair, our skin, our culture, our voices, everything about us was subject to critique.
Being “othered” teaches children to:
Question their worth
Become hypervigilant
Work twice as hard for half the recognition
Expect rejection even when they have done nothing wrong
These experiences do not disappear with age, they evolve into emotional patterns that follow us into adulthood.
When discrimination becomes a barrier to healing
It is not enough to tell people to “get help” when the help itself is often biased. People of color are:
Less likely to receive proper mental health diagnoses
More likely to have their symptoms minimized or misunderstood
Often treated as “resilient enough” to endure suffering
This creates a cycle of silence where people carry trauma privately because the system has not made space for their truth.
Intergenerational trauma: The silent inheritance
We carry more than our personal stories. We carry the echoes of our ancestors, their fears, their survival strategies, their grief, their courage.
Sometimes we mistake inherited vigilance for personality. But in reality, it is generational wisdom designed to protect us.
Healing means honoring that inheritance while choosing not to let it define our emotional future.
Healing in community: Our most powerful medicine
Individual therapy is powerful, but community healing is sacred. Our communities have always healed through:
Storytelling
Prayer
Ritual
Music
Touch
Food
Shared truth
There is something deeply transformative about healing in circles rather than in isolation. Racism may harm us collectively, but it has also taught us the necessity of collective restoration.
The call to transform the systems
Understanding the impact is the starting point. Demanding better is the next step. We deserve systems that listen, affirm, and adapt, not systems that silence or dismiss us. Healing is our birthright. Joy is our rebellion. Wholeness is our inheritance.
Read more from Stacey Lynelle
Stacey Lynelle, Serial Entrepreneur, Spiritual Coach
Stacey Lynelle is an author, empowerment coach, and spiritual mentor, podcast host, dedicated to guiding others through healing and transformation. After her own abusive childhood, and narcissitic family upbringing, she has created strategies to help individuals with her teachings, public speakings -Through her Fix Your Crown series and soulful writings, and The Empowerment Chronicles I, II, III, She has dedicated her life to encouraging individuals to reconnect with their divine essence, release generational wounds, and rise into their highest potential.
