Savannah Brown

In this episode of Just Like Nana, host Amie (Elizabeth) Penny Sayler is joined by Savannah Brown, where they discuss the mental and emotional tolls of breaking generational trauma patterns. 

Together, they explore the reality that breaking trauma cycles isn't a clean, linear process—it's messy, imperfect, and requires an incredible amount of somatic awareness and radical self-honesty to move forward.

About Savannah

An Army veteran and police officer, Savannah is also a student obtaining a Master’s in Social Work. She is the author of In the Wake of Wounds: A Soul's Revival, a raw and unfiltered look at her personal journey through grief and the complexities of family dynamics. 

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Recognize that breaking generational cycles isn't a "one and done" event. It involves navigating a confusing, non-linear path of grief, anger, and acceptance where the goal isn't perfection, but consistent effort and self-grace.
• Learn to listen to your body’s signals. Identifying physical sensations—like a racing heart or a gut feeling—is a critical first step in regulating your nervous system and stopping a trauma response before it takes over.
• Discover how the act of conscious parenting can actually accelerate your own healing. By choosing to react with patience instead of the autopilot of your past, you aren't just protecting your children; you are re-parenting yourself.
• Shift your perspective on relationships by prioritizing reciprocity and safety. Healing involves the difficult but necessary work of setting boundaries with people who do not support your peace or growth.
• Adopt a mindset of ancestral sovereignty. Even when you are breaking their cycles, you can carry the strength and resilience of those who came before you, entering every space with the confidence that you belong there.

Resources Mentioned

• TacMobility
• The Workout Witch

I connected with Savannah on #PodMatch. 

Connect with Savannah

In The Wake of Wounds: A Soul’s Revival

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Theme music by Carter Penny.

Transcript

Breaking Generational and Family Trauma Patterns with Savannah Brown

Amie Penny Sayler 0:21

Welcome to Just Like Nana. Thrilled for you to be here today. I think it will be possibly spring when you hear this. And I hope you're enjoying all the new life, the changes, the promise in the air. It's an exciting time of year. I am honored today to be joined by Savannah Brown. Savannah is an Army veteran, police officer, and a student obtaining a master's in social work. She's also the author of In the Wake of Wounds, A Soul's Revival. And just because that's not enough, she's a mom actively infusing the healing she's done into her parenting. She's here to share her unfiltered life journey. So listeners who are also breaking cycles know they're not alone and the process is messy and imperfect. I do want to let you know that Savannah and I do discuss both domestic abuse and suicide. So if either or both of those topics are triggering at all to you or just too difficult to kind of process and listen to, please take care of yourself and skip today's episode. Welcome, Savannah. So excited to talk with you today. Thank you for having me. Absolutely. We like to start if you have a story to share with kind of a favorite or powerful memory of your grandma and what you called her.

Savannah Brown 1:51

So my maternal great-grandmother, her name was Josephine Holley, and everyone in the family called her Grandsun. I don't know originally, like truthfully, where the nickname came from, but I believe my eldest uncle, uh Milton Jr. was the one that gave her the nickname, and everybody else in the family just kind of ran with it. She was a powerhouse within communities in Boston, Massachusetts. I mean, she was heavily involved in a lot of different arenas. She was a business owner. She started La Parisienne Academy, which was a cosmetology school. Um, and so a lot of the local businesses that were in Roxbury in particular, there's a lot of people that had gone to her school and graduated from there and started their own businesses. So she put in quite some work in within the community in Boston, Massachusetts. But one of the memories that I remember in particular was she took me to some meeting. I think it was with her like boss's boss after she had closed down her school and was working for the MBTA at this point. And I remember I guess he called me Sweetheart and I didn't like that. And so I said, sir, my name is not Sweetheart. It's Savannah. And she loves to tell that story to everybody. Like when they first met me, and she's like, This is my granddaughter, and she is a powerhouse and someone to be reckoned with. She kind of set the precedence of like you're going to use your voice to speak your truth, and it's going to resonate with people, and you're not shy or afraid of doing so.

Amie Penny Sayler 3:23

That is beautiful and amazing. Did you feel seen?

Savannah Brown 3:27

I did a lot of the times because we had not weird family dynamics, but we had dysfunction. And I feel like my great-grandmother was kind of the center of the truth telling and the honesty. I mean, she kind of spoke in riddles, and they make sense now that I am older and I'm an adult and I've been through some life experiences, right? But she was the center of the truth for our family. And so she made me feel seen in spaces where I may not have been within my family dynamic, my immediate family dynamic. So yeah.

Amie Penny Sayler 4:05

That's wonderful. Do you know about how old you were when you said that?

Savannah Brown 4:08

She kept telling everybody I was around five or six when I said this. And I'm like, that's quite advanced for a five or six-year-old. But you know, at that age, you're fearless anyway. So you don't have, you know, you're not programmed for like social niceties and everything else. You're just like, I don't like that.

Generational Strength, Secrets & Trauma

Amie Penny Sayler 4:25

Absolutely. Well, and you were even polite about it, but you were very crisp and clear about exactly what you needed. And I love those stories from when we're, you know, somewhere between four to seven, because they do seem to sort of capture the essence of who we are. And so love that, you know, she was seeing in you you have a voice and you can use it to help others. And now fast forward, here you are, which is amazing. When you said she was your maternal great-grandmother, what decades about was it when she had her school and was so engaged in the Roxbury community?

Savannah Brown 5:02

I want to say it was around the 60s when she had this. Some of the photos that I look back at, I mean, they're in black and white still for crying out loud. So I want to say this was in the 60s. I knew that she grew up during the Great Depression, which was very big on how she raised us, as far as you know, you don't waste goods. And she was very traditional in the sense of every Sunday when we went to church, ladies wore dresses and pantyhose. You had to wear pantyhose when you left the house. That was her big thing. And so she was big on etiquette and how we spoke to people and how we spoke about ourselves. So I think she ingrained some very core values within us. But I feel like during my most crucial period in life, after she passed away when I was in high school, that was probably when I needed her the most. Because you're a younger woman and you're growing up and certain things are happening, and you may you may, you know, I wasn't able to necessarily talk to my mom directly about it. And so I felt like when I needed my great-grandmother's like honesty, protection, and expertise, I didn't have access to that. And also because she was a businesswoman and she did it during a time where, you know, women were shunned for for being single parents in, you know, the 50s and 60s or having children at a wedlock and even owning a business as a woman back then was just kind of unheard of. And so, well, not unheard of, but it was just harder. And so I felt like during high school and into my early 20s when I really needed to have conversations around like just how our family dynamics were. She always used to say that there's too many secrets within our family. And I didn't realize it until I gotten up to this point in life that I was like, oh, this is what you meant by the weight of secrets and families and generational trauma and how that gets passed down and how sometimes our kiddos repeat those cycles. One, if they don't have the knowledge, two, if we're not able to have the uncomfortable conversations that surround that truth. And three, if nobody's done the work in previous generations to ensure that their children and beyond don't have to repeat some of those same mistakes.

Amie Penny Sayler 7:16

She sounds like an absolute force, as is, I believe, her great-granddaughter, you. And I love that you're here. I mean, I just imagine her beaming right now, knowing what you're doing and what you're putting out into the world.

Savannah Brown 7:31

So I hope so.

Growing Up in Domestic Violence & Unhealthy Dynamics

Amie Penny Sayler 7:45

Um, and I'm gonna quote here, breaking every generational curse, my bloodline couldn't, which amazing tagline. Oh, thank you. Um, and shows what a badass you are. What does that mean to you? How does it play out in your life if you don't mind just kind of launching into a little bit of this has been my experience of kind of my discovery of the ancestral trauma, what it's meant to me? It's a big broad question, but go ahead and just dive in.

Savannah Brown 8:12

Yeah. So getting into the nitty-gritty of it, I grew up in a domestic violence household. One of the very early memories on that I had of my mother was her pretty much getting her face smashed into the bathroom mirror. And I remember that there were two cops that showed up. One guy looked like he was Ronnie Coleman in his prime. And there was another lady that showed up. And I remember that my mother's mother, my grandmother, was we were sitting on the couch and she was holding us. And I remember they took the guy away in handcuffs, and we ended up staying with my grandmother for a few days while my mom was healing up. And then I remember coming back in the same house and most of the blood was gone. She had cleaned it up. But there was a little speck that was still left at the bottom of the banister that I don't think she ever caught. So anytime me and my brother and sister would play hide and go seek, and I would hide in certain spots in the house, I would always notice where that one speck was that wasn't cleaned up. And I remember, you know, fast forward, I think I'm about eight or nine. At this point, my mom is remarried to my stepfather. We have been consistently living with him. And they were, you know, I would say not in the beginning of their marriage, but at this point, we had already been living with him for a few years. And I remember randomly us getting on the bus one afternoon because she just didn't want to park in the city. And I remember asking her, and I said, Hey, whatever happened to your ex-boyfriend when I was five, and her eyes just got wide. And she literally froze and she looked at me and she said, There's no way you can remember that. You were so young. And that was the end of the conversation. There was no acknowledgement. There was no conversation about it when I became a young adult and I started dating. There was no vetting process, there was no understanding of this is how you should be treated. And, you know, between my mom and stepfather growing up in that house, it was toxic. And I didn't realize the dynamics that they had as a couple until I became an adult, as far as my stepfather being in control of the finances and my mom wanting to stay in this marriage with this person just for the sake of society of, well, I don't want to be a single parent. This is what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to be married. This makes my family complete. This makes the picture complete. And then you're in that household that also has the mentality of what happens in this house stays in this house, and the weight of shame and secrets. And yes, we argue, but that's just, you know, passion as a couple. Yes, we have issues, but who doesn't? And it's just better to stay married than it is to have to start life over again separate. So my foundation was very unhealthy relationship dynamics. And when I got older, I realized that, you know, I when I went into the military and when I got out and I went into law enforcement, I remember my coworker the other day saying, you know, every time that we're going through training and we're doing these scenes, he's like, you just remain even keel throughout all of them. And I'm like, in my mind, I'm I'm laughing about it. But then I talk to my therapist and she's like, Yeah, well, when you grow up in chaos and you put yourself in another environment where there's chaos involved, you're just able to function because that is your, that's your normal. That's your, okay, I know what to do. Oh, yep, this has happened. Okay, we need to do this, this, this, this, and this. It's like a checklist, just going down the checklist. And coming from that kind of household and those kind of mentalities, there was a lot of things that I had to unlearn within my own relationships, within my own friendships. And I think what really put it to the forefront was becoming a mom. Because once I looked at my son and I said, okay, I can't repeat any of these things. Like I don't want to stay in any unhealthy, dynamic or relationship with an intimate partner if this is gonna repeat the cycle, right? I want to teach my son about financial literacy so that when he is of age, he knows how to function as an adult and doesn't have to figure everything out. Whereas I didn't have that. My mom honestly couldn't show me a lot of things in adulthood. I learned about financial literacy when I joined the army and I was actively seeking that information out. It wasn't until school when I learned, and you know, going majoring in psychology that I understood about family dynamics and the weight of it. And, you know, you're going over all these theories and you're you're looking at all these psychologists and Ericsson and Freud and child development and biopsychosocial, and then it starts to click. Then these things start to click in your mind of like, oh, this is what this meant in my own family. This is how this is unhealthy. Oh, this isn't normal, right? And so I'm unlearning all of these things, and then I'm looking at my son and I'm like, I want to do better for you. I don't have a blueprint, I don't have necessarily support from outside people that are saying this is the way that you should show up different. But I know that I in my heart, it's like, I see this and I want to do the work. And that's what I've been working with, not just with my therapist, but you know, feeling it. You can psychoanalyze and intellectualize your feelings all day, every day, but the body holds it, right? And it's gonna hold it if I'm waking up at two o'clock in the morning or if I'm having a random anxiety attack and I'm like, what is happening right now? That's just your body's way of saying, hey, you've experienced all these things. We're just gonna let it out. And it's not gonna be when you expect it, and it's not gonna be pretty. And so it's the somatic exercises, the reshaping what support looks like in community, going to therapy consistently, doing that kind of work to really ensure that my child doesn't have to repeat any of the things that I've gone through and any of the things that my mother is kind of at a point where she doesn't want to acknowledge. And that's what I mean by breaking all the generational curses that my bloodline couldn't. It's hard to break those curses when you're still trying to seek the approval of that generation, one. And two, when they don't want to have those hard conversations. And even the moments where I've tried to have those hard conversations with my mother, it's always met with, well, I did the best that I could. And while I understand that as a young woman, as a mother now, I'm willing to change any job. I'm willing to leave any relationship, I'm willing to cut off any family member for the safety and the well-being of my child. And I don't think my mother was able to do that hard work because to her, the mentality was family was used as an excuse for hurt. Family was used as a coverall of they can do these things to you and you're supposed to forgive them because they're family. Well, then your definition of family and my definition of family are two different things. When I look at family, I look at it as that should be your support. The world is already hard enough. The world is already going to challenge you enough. The world is already gonna try and humble you. The world is already gonna try and throw everything that they can at you. Your safest place should and needs to be your family. That's where your baseline should be. That's where you're able to regurgitate, that's where you're able to get safety. And that's how she was raised and what she believed.

Amie Penny Sayler 15:43

I certainly don't have all parenting answers by any stretch of the imagination. And, you know, everyone is different. I think there's a lot of authenticity that in really good parenting comes out. And so every style is different. But that is one truth we've tried to hold. I think sometimes there can be a theory of parenting that's I'm gonna make things really harsh and critical to sort of make you tough and you know, get you ready for the world, because the world is awful. And I just want to take a moment to acknowledge, appreciate, and echo what you said about the world is going to be the world. What we have control over is this home or this place or this space as a family, and this space and this home can be accepting and soft, and it can change. You know, I think sometimes family dynamics can get very stuck where everyone is sort of assigned a role. And instead of being a person who is going to evolve and change and their preferences are going to be different, and, you know, they're not always the quote bad one or the good one or whatever. They're just a human with many different aspects. So just allowing that space and that grace for that is so powerful, I think, for anyone and particularly for children.

Savannah Brown 17:09

Yes. And I understand that my mom was raised in difficult circumstances. But even it, I think the hardest part for me is again having those conversations with her, which now we're no contact, but having those conversations previously with her of the impact of the conversations that we could not have growing up or the things that I was not taught. It showed up in different ways. And between my brother, my sister, and myself, I'm the youngest, but I've been the oldest in a lot of ways because I moved out a lot younger than my siblings and kind of always been independent on my own. They've always stayed with my mom in some way, shape, or form, and they're older than me. But I was always the one that was like, okay, we're gonna call the family meeting so that whatever's going on in the house, we can discuss it as a family unit. My brother had been in and out of prison, which that also led to my choice in career. He suffered from depression as a result, and he ended up committing suicide back in 2022. And my sister went into nursing, so she's a nurse practitioner. But she had my nieces at a very young age at 19, and my mom has always kind of, you know, she's a golden child. So the eldest can do no wrong in my mom's eyes, but that led to complications between her and I because my mom always chose favorites, and so it was like this secret competition or sabotage that would happen. And my mom would always brush it off and say, No, well, you know, that's that's you know, that's your sister, she's not like that, and this that and the fourth. And it wasn't until my sister was sabotaging my intimate relationships that my mom said, Oh, maybe you were right, maybe I did see this or I brushed it under the rug. And I think when she said that and acknowledged it in conversation, it was like, so you saw it, but you holding on to it and holding that secret and not acknowledging it showed me that I'm not safe with you. And if I'm not safe with you, then that means that my son can't be safe with you.

Amie Penny Sayler 19:18

Right.

Parenting Differently: Big Feelings & Safety at Home

Savannah Brown 19:19

And so I had to make that hard decision of again, it is safer to love you from a distance, to acknowledge the strides that you did make, but do so from a distance because the impact that it's had on my life has been tremendous. Anytime that I was stable in my career, anytime that I was stable in a relationship, my family unfortunately had emergencies or things going on that I would immediately jump to. What do you need? This is that. Absolutely, I'll figure it out. All right. I'm the family therapist. And then when you go into psychology and social work now, it's like, oh, this is fitting, right? Oh, yeah, no, we're at work and we're dealing with this DV or we're dealing with this encourageable juvenile. And I'm just like, oh no, that's just, you know, my brother acted the same way when he was a kid. This is probably what's going on. Let's just have a conversation with them. They're just like, how are you so calm? And it's like, no, I'm just the interesting dynamic that I grew up in, this is a byproduct of it, right?

Amie Penny Sayler 20:23

When you talk about the secrets and kind of what goes unsaid, in so many ways, and you know, you talk about kind of the emotions living in the body. And in so many ways, those secret shames seep in so much deeper because I there's no release for them. And there's no even acknowledgement from the adults in the room that it they're real, they exist, they're here. This isn't in my head, or I'm not making this up sort of. What has your work been like to kind of break that and to be able to name what is happening and help your son with having words for what is going on instead of sort of the burying and the secrets?

Savannah Brown 21:11

So whenever my son has a he's at the he's four, but he's at the age where he's exploring everything. And, you know, if you tell him, hey, we can't take this toy train from the children's museum, like we have to leave the stuff here, we can't take it. But if he's throwing, you know, tantrums like that, it's okay to acknowledge that he's having big feelings. Whereas it's not, you know, back in my day, it would have been a pop in the mouth, be quiet, get in the back of the car. Right. And so just allowing him to have that space of it's okay to have big feelings, buddy. You know, we're gonna sit here and you can cry it out for as long as you need to, but we can't take the train. And then we're gonna head home when you're feeling okay, and everything's gonna be okay because you got toys at home. So I think just creating the space where he can acknowledge it. And don't get me wrong, there are some days where I absolutely I still have no idea what I'm doing. I'm not not a parenting expert by any means. And I'm I'm still a student in more ways than one, continuously. But just noticing the difference between, again, how I was raised and then what I want to be able to provide for him and not letting it sit within my own body, meaning the days that I do get overwhelmed, because it is a lot between being a student, being a patrol officer, um, dealing with my son and his needs. It's it's a lot. And so making sure that I still have the space to pour back into myself, and that's checking in with my therapist, that is doing the somatic exercises that's in DR, right? If I come across hard stuff at work, or if I'm still trying to process a lot of the things that I've been through, which that's still just been continuously, it's not like a one and done, and being able to ensure that I'm regulated in some way, shape, or form to still be able to show up for my son who has these big emotions that he's still trying to process and find the word words for. And it's hilarious because I'll always check in with a few of my professors that do like child development, like that's their whole field. And you know, I'm always sitting there freaking out as a parent. I'm like, well, he's he's doing this and I'm so nervous about that. And they're like the fact that we're even having this conversation and that you it shows that you care that much and that you're willing to do the work and that's okay. You're not gonna get everything right, but I can guarantee you that like your kiddo is happy and he's secure. And good on you for still pursuing the things that you want to. Because at one point, when I had lost my support, meaning my mom, my sister, there was nobody helping me. I was taking my son to school with me. And so I would, if he gets a little too rowdy, I would stand outside in the hallway and I would stare at the whiteboard with him on my hip. And my classmates were so gracious. Thank you guys, that you dad, they were so gracious. But my professors would say, no, just bring him in, you know, and I'll have crayons and things to entertain him for a bit while we're learning. And it was great. But it was just being able to include him, let him have his feelings, be supportive, show up every day for him, and take in as much information as I can and apply it to how I want to parent, how I want to show up as a mom, how I want to show up as a partner, how I want to show up as a coworker, all of the above. I try and use all of that information in every facet of my life and not just one. And I'm it's like I said, I'm still a work in progress, so I haven't figured it out.

Rage in the Body & Choosing to Go No Contact

Amie Penny Sayler 24:31

That skill set, though, that you're giving your son and teaching him from such a young age of just identifying and acknowledging, I am having a feeling right now. And I am letting that feeling play out. And it's okay to have a feeling. It's not big, bad, and scary because that's so much of what sometimes can get swept under the rug and missed. And even as adults, I mean, you know, that name it TV, food, drugs, whatever. I mean, there's so many different mechanisms for ignoring the feeling, pretending you're not having the feeling. And when you just, and again, I am not trying to sound preachy at all because, oh my goodness, I have struggled, you know. So this is like my head understands this, it's harder to incorporate in the moment, but I just want to take a moment to just acknowledge what a gift you're giving your son of just truly being okay, that here's a feeling. I'm gonna go ahead and experience it. And then after I experience it, life is gonna continue to go on and it's not gonna be stuck inside of me.

Savannah Brown 25:39

And I think one of the things that I've noticed too is when we talk about rage and how it stays in the body and how you're socialized to not feel it, kind of just stuff it all down, right? And what that connection of suppressed emotions does to the body and what it does to the mind and how it shows up later in life. And the teenager part of me, right, when I was having the conversation with my mom and I had the conversation with my sister before I went no contact with everybody. The teenage rage in me is like, how could you allow this to happen? Why would you do this to me? I didn't deserve any of this. And then the other side of me is saying, like, I understand as someone who you went through domestic violence yourself with partners, you grew up in foster care because my grandmother dropped you off at CPS steps when you were eight. Like, I understand those things. And even with my sister, you had your kids young. You felt like you were the golden child, you had the standard that you had to live up to. You were upset at me because you felt like I had more freedom in life because I was the younger sister that moved out of the house and didn't have kids young. So, on one aspect, I understand. But the other part of me, again, is I would never allow jealousy or envy of another person to intentionally force me to do things to hurt that person. And I think that's the part where I get so frustrated, and that's the curse that's not broken. It's the unhealthy relationship dynamics with intimate partners. It's not being financially smart. Like I at one point I had to take my mom's and sister's credit cards because they were just spending money on things that were ridiculous. Mind you, I'm the youngest. But I had to get this information to them. And even after I had bought my house, they had bought a place together separately years after. But it was one of those situations where it's like, but you can't even afford it. If one person loses their job or if one thing happens, that's it. Right. And so it's like trying to have those conversations or realizing that that's a generational, like if you don't have the information and you haven't done the work to do the information, you're not gonna know. Right. Which means that I had to do a lot of work on just I want to be secure financially. I want to have a healthy relationship, even if that means that I have to go to couples therapy with my partner, even if that means that, you know, I only have one kid because I feel like this is a challenge enough and I don't think that I am doing it at a superb level. Or deciding, hey, I've gotten to the point where I feel like I'm spiritually and physically and mentally and emotionally in a great place to make these said sound decisions. And then having an adult that is living a life that I would like to emulate or that I could get great advice from. Like I said, when I needed my great grandmother, I, man, I could have used her in early adulthood when it mattered to me the most. It's unfortunate that I I lost her at the time that we did because every now and then I'll talk to the wind and I'll just say, man, I wish you were here. And sometimes a little white butterfly will come by and I'm like, I know that's her.

Amie Penny Sayler 28:54

I love that. I I did want to suggest she might be there in ways that are just harder to hear and feel and see.

Savannah Brown 29:02

You know, I look so proud because I feel like, man, it's been a challenge just to get to this point. And I don't want the little violin, you know, where it's like, I'm just specifically speaking from a place of trauma. I want to be very careful about that because I don't want to reiterate that rhetoric of all, you know, women from this demographic or whatever come from a place of trauma. I want to be very aware of that. But I also know that within my family dynamics, that strength has been weaponized, you know. I don't want to be strong. I want to be cared for. So please treat me like I'm fragile because you're far more careful with things when they're delicate. And I think that's how things should have unfolded. Like I don't want to have to put this armor on at work. I don't want to put this armor on with friends and family. I don't want to be in a place where kindness is considered weakness. But I also know that that has shaped how I show up for my community, how I show up in work, how I show up in school, how I show up as a mom. And so I don't want to take away from that either. But sometimes I do think, man, how much more amazing could I have been had I just had adequate support, right? How much more amazing, how many more lives could I have touched, affected in some way, shape, or form, if I had just had these perfect set of dominoes behind me.

Amie Penny Sayler 30:25

You know, and sometimes it's both ways, right? I mean, that is so much of what you've just described is holding two things that seem opposed can both be true at the same time. And so what you just described, yes, in some ways that is true. If you'd started at a different place, if there would have been more supports along the way. And part of why you are where you are right now and why you can speak with authority in a way that resonates with people and they want to listen to is because of the adversity. And it's because of I have struggled through this. Maybe I'm not quite on the other side yet. Maybe I am in some aspects, but still working through in other ones. And it shows other people a path forward. So it can be both at once as so many of the things you described.

Somatic Practices, EMDR & Caring for the Caregiver

Savannah Brown 31:24

Yeah. And I I also, you know, and I I hope that listeners can take that part away from it is that it's gonna be a continuous journey and speak your truth and do it scared. And grief can show up in multitude of ways in life, and it's not linear, and it's not pretty, and it's not glamorous, and your body's gonna feel it, and it's gonna pop up at the most inopportune times. So take the time to process it.

Amie Penny Sayler 32:00

You had mentioned some somatics. What do you like to do somatically?

Savannah Brown 32:04

There's uh two people that I ended up following on Instagram. So TacMobility and the Workout Witch. And you can download both of their, they kind of have like booklets in one of them, and where the workout witch has like a video of set of videos. And so you you're literally just doing all of these exercises in the most comfortable, laziest position that you possibly can. So she's like, if you know, if you want to do this in your bed 10 minutes before you're set to go to sleep, you lay on your back, you're rocking your hips back and forth, your legs back and forth, you're doing deep breath exercises, all of these, you're you're rocking your feet back and forth. And so it's all of these exercises that you're like, this just why what is this gonna do? This, you know, this you're if you're skeptical, you're gonna say, What is this gonna do? But again, it shows up in your body in different ways. So doing these exercises helps to release the emotions, the trauma, the feelings that you're probably not thinking are still there. And then I'm a huge fan of EMDR because I feel like it's helped me in a multitude of ways of just some of the very difficult calls that I've had to deal with that again stayed with me in ways that I didn't realize.

Amie Penny Sayler 33:14

I mean, we haven't even touched on that, and and and we probably won't in this discussion. Um but you know, not only do you have your own personal history you're working through and and living inside of you, but you've had your military experience, you're now a patrol officer. I mean, there's a lot of other people's lived trauma that your life is intersecting with. So it's it's a lot to carry.

Savannah Brown 33:41

And then just being cognizant of that, right? Making sure that I'm aware of that and still surrounding myself with people who are able to keep me in check about it. I think that's the biggest thing because it is a lot for anyone. So that does require more work than the average person as far as on your mental health, being aware of your community, being aware of your support, making sure you're pouring into yourself because I cannot pour into other people for with an empty cup.

“Grief” Poem & Closing Reflections

Amie Penny Sayler 34:08

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I purchased and read and loved your book. Thank you. So um, Savannah has a book of poetry in the wake of wounds, a soul's revival. It is beautiful. I will visit this many, many times. I do not want to put you on the spot. So if this is something you're not comfortable with, you don't need to do it. Would you be willing to read one of the poems from your book?

Savannah Brown 34:36

Absolutely. Um, and this is actually so I ended up writing this book, and it was literally just my my diary. I just did a self-publishing of my diary. And one of the classes that I ended up taking, which was Death in American Society, I took it intentionally because I felt like, okay, well, this applies to work as far as dealing with death investigations and how we process an American culture death. But at the time, a lot of my classmates did not know that I was still dealing with the grief of having lost my brother to suicide in 2022. It's a weird space to go from. I am the expert showing up to take care of a death investigation to now I'm processing my own family member's death and having to turn on work brain because my mom and sister can't handle it. And so at the time I had already planned my brother's, you know, I'd already taken care of his funeral arrangements and everything like that. And so this was the space for me to process that. And that's why I ended up just publishing the book. But there's grammatical issues and everything else, you know, there, but I wanted it to be as raw and unfiltered as I was feeling. And so this poem in particular is called Grief. It's not linear, but no one explained how the tears may flow at the most inopportune times. It's not quiet. Sometimes the rage seeps through, a deep disdain from what has occurred, how your reality makes you question if what occurred is true. It's raw, unfiltered, crude, undeveloped, yet I must feel all of it to let it go. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I've recited and read the steps, but the emotions correlated with each one come in no order and have no time stamp of how long they will stay. Wow.

Amie Penny Sayler 36:21

What an honor to your brother. Well, thank you, Savannah, for being here, for being so just open, vulnerable, willing to share. This is my story and letting people hear that so they can hear pieces of their own story and kind of find little paths forward, little threads they can pull on that might sort of help in their own healing and journey.

Savannah Brown 36:45

And we're all just living our own kind of like messy lives, right? Like, and it's not cookie-cutter, and everyone's experience is gonna be different, and that's okay. And just taking whatever learning you can take from all of the experiences to push forward and just be a better person.

Amie Penny Sayler 37:03

Absolutely. Well, I am not gonna do your words as much justice as you just did, but I would love to end with two lines from your book if you don't mind. Absolutely. May you choose people who choose you and enter every room like your ancestors sent you. Yes. Gorgeous. Thank you for those words. So nice to talk to you, Savannah.