Uprooting the Old Roots: Reclaiming Care from the Lineage of Harm

“The new roots we are planting — love, equity, belonging, understanding, forgiveness, frameworks, equanimity, and respect — are not abstractions. They are lived commitments.” - Mary Coughlin

As I continue to read through My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem, I find myself returning again and again to his framing of “white-on-white trauma”; the centuries of brutality Europeans inflicted upon one another before exporting that pain through colonization and racialized violence.

It reminds me that trauma never begins in a vacuum. It grows in the soil of hierarchy, of patriarchy, of supremacy, of fear disguised as order. Medieval torture, witch burnings, religious persecution; these were not random acts of cruelty but organized systems of control built on a theology of separation: body from soul, man from woman, spirit from earth, powerful from powerless.

And even the very concept of race — which we now understand as a social construct rather than a biological truth — reveals the lengths to which humanity will go to rationalize its violence. When fear and hierarchy become the organizing principles, myth-making becomes the mechanism for justification. Race, gender, and purity narratives offered language to legitimize what was, at its core, unhealed trauma; harm seeking expression, dressed up as order.

Yet it’s worth remembering that this was not the only story unfolding in the world. While Europe institutionalized hierarchy and fear, many societies across Africa, Asia, and the Americas were living by very different values — communal, relational, and cosmologically grounded.

They understood survival not as conquest, but as cooperation.

African philosophies like Ubuntu (“I am because we are”) and Indigenous teachings across the Americas carried a deep wisdom of interdependence, what we might now call collective regulation.

These weren’t perfect societies, but they remind us that humans once knew how to live in harmony with each other, with the land, and with the mysteries that sustain life. Even our earliest ancestors, as paleoanthropologists remind us, survived through connection. We thrived not because we fought hardest, but because we cared best.

That memory buried deep in our collective nervous system tells us that another way has always been possible.

The Intersectionality of the Roots

When we trace the lineage of modern suffering, the roots intertwine.

• Patriarchy severed empathy from leadership and made domination appear virtuous.

• White-body supremacy externalized centuries of internalized terror, projecting purity and control onto racial hierarchies.

• Religious absolutism fused fear with morality, sanctifying violence as virtue.

These same roots run through today’s institutions including healthcare. The hierarchies that once justified torture now show up in subtle ways: whose pain is believed, whose voice counts, who gets to define “normal.”

We see it in the NICU and throughout pediatrics when medically necessary interventions are performed with the unconscious echo of “I’m bigger, I’m stronger, and this is happening whether you like it or not.” The body of the infant or child — small, dependent, voiceless — becomes the site where old patterns of domination are reenacted, often without awareness.

This isn’t about malicious intent. Many of these procedures may indeed be essential to survival. But how they are carried out matters deeply. When we prioritize the task over the experience, efficiency over empathy, we risk perpetuating the very harm we seek to heal. Trauma-informed developmental care asks us to pause and reframe:

Yes, this may be necessary and it is still painful.
Yes, I must act and I can still center your comfort, your calm, your dignity.

That shift — from power over to care with — is where the old roots begin to loosen, and where the soil of equity and compassion begins to take hold.

Where Caring Science Meets the Work of Healing

Caring Science, as articulated by Jean Watson, offers a sacred counter-narrative: that love, presence, and relationship are not sentimental add-ons but the essence of healing. It restores what patriarchy and supremacy stripped away, reverence for the human soul.

When I began shaping the principles of Trauma-Informed Developmental Care (TIDC), I realized it was part of this same restoration. TIDC invites us to see every baby, parent, and clinician as a being shaped by relationship and deserving of safety, dignity, and equity. It is the science of re-rooting care in belonging and justice.

Both Caring Science and TIDC challenge the old paradigm of control with a new ethic of co-regulation, equity, and mutual transformation. They are not parallel tracks, they are intertwined roots of the same healing tree.

Uprooting the Diseased Elements

To heal the tree of care, we must first recognize its diseased roots:

• The belief that authority outranks empathy.

• The illusion that detachment equals professionalism.

• The inheritance of fear that mistakes control for safety.

• The inequities embedded in systems that privilege some bodies and silence others.

Uprooting these patterns means cultivating new soil, practices that honor embodiment, humility, and shared humanity. In the NICU, this might look like:

• Centering parents as partners rather than visitors.

• Making space for staff to process the emotional labor of care.

• Designing systems that regulate rather than retraumatize.

• Ensuring that care practices, resources, and opportunities for healing are distributed equitably across race, class, and role.

Each of these acts is a form of resistance, not political resistance, but soul resistance.

Planting the New Roots: Where TIDC and B.U.F.F.E.R. Intertwine

If trauma is the story of disconnection, then healing must be the story of reunion.
Caring Science calls this transpersonal caring, a relationship in which both the caregiver and the cared-for are transformed through love, presence, and reverence for the sacredness of life.

In practice, this sacred reciprocity comes alive through the integration of the TIDC principles and the B.U.F.F.E.R. framework, the science and soul of healing entwined.

Together, they form the new roots from which a more compassionate, equitable, and human healthcare can grow.

These roots reflect a profound reorientation: from fixing and controlling to accompanying and honoring.
They remind us that the path forward is not technical but relational — not about doing more, but about being differently.

When we embody the integration of TIDC and B.U.F.F.E.R., we are not simply improving outcomes; we are healing the lineage of separation itself. We are re-membering — bringing back together — what patriarchy, supremacy, and fear tore apart: science and soul, mind and body, caregiver and cared-for.

The new roots we are planting — love, equity, belonging, understanding, forgiveness, frameworks, equanimity, and respect — are not abstractions. They are lived commitments. They are the daily practice of remembering that the body is sacred, the relationship is holy, and caring — equitable, embodied, compassionate caring — is essential.

A Living Invitation

What would healthcare — and humanity — look like if we traced every act of care back to its roots and chose love instead of fear?

Maybe the work ahead isn’t about creating something new, but about remembering what we already know: that the body is sacred, the relationship is holy, and caring is essential.

Reflect

1. Where do you notice the remnants of hierarchy — in yourself, your work, your systems?

2. How might you practice “re-rooting” your daily actions in love, equity, and respect?

3. What would a culture of care look like if it were truly reciprocal — for patients, families, and staff alike?

Take care and care well,

Mary