Welcome to the Inclusive Minds Podcast! In this episode, Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross is joined by the Tiffany Benford, a Licensed Independent Clinical Social Worker (LICSW) and a co-author of “Antiblackness and the Stories of Authentic Allies: Lived Experiences in the Fight Against Institutionalized Racism.”
Tiffany, an expert in trauma-informed care with 20 years of personal experience in self-healing from Complex PTSD (C-PTSD), dedicates her 15-year clinical career to understanding resilience and the lasting impact of trauma on the body and mind. Her work deeply explores how identity, intersectionality, and social factors shape our human experiences.
In this episode, you’ll gain powerful insights as we discuss:
- A Mother’s Journey and Trauma: Dive into Tiffany’s mother’s harrowing experience during the Cuban Revolution, including separation from family, time in detention camps, and the challenges of forced resettlement, revealing the roots of their intergenerational trauma.
- The Weight of Mixed Messages: Explore the implicit and explicit messages passed down through generations—from the pressure to assimilate and conform to specific beauty standards (like hair and skin color in Latinx and other communities of color) to the suppression of emotions and the impact of parental emotional dysregulation.
- Breaking the Cycle: Discover practical strategies and Tiffany’s unique approach to helping clients break the cycle of intergenerational trauma. Learn about her “three grounding questions” to reconnect with the body, the power of somatic therapy in addressing trauma in the body, and the importance of challenging negative narratives through an abundance mindset.
Guest Links:
Instagram @witchpathwellness
Dr Carolyn’s Links
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolyn-coker-ross-md-mph-ceds-c-7b81176/
TEDxPleasantGrove talk: https://youtu.be/ljdFLCc3RtM
To buy “Antiblackness and the Stories of Authentic Allies” – bit.ly/3ZuSp1T
Carolyn Ross MD: Welcome everyone. This is Dr. Carolyn Coker Ross. Welcome to the inclusive minds. Podcast. I have with me my special guest. Tiffany Alvarez Benford, who is a licensed, independent, clinical, social worker, who practices in Massachusetts, North Carolina, Vermont, and soon Denver, Colorado with 20 years of personal experience in self healing and recovery from complex Ptsd. She has dedicated 15 year career to trauma-informed care, focusing on resilience and the lasting impact of trauma on the body and the mind. Tiffany’s work centers on how identity, intersectionality, and social factors shape our experiences, and she is committed to helping clients overcome barriers to living authentically and joyfully by addressing the roots of isolation and disconnection. Welcome to the show, Tiffany.
Tiffany Benford: Thank you very much for having me.
Carolyn Ross MD: And I also wanted to just remind you that Tiffany is one of the authors of our book. Anti-blackness, and the stories of authentic Allies lived experiences in the fight against institutionalized racism. Her chapter is entitled Mixed Messages navigating the intersections of identity and intergenerational Trauma.
So, Tiffany, you have an amazing story, and it highlights some of the themes that you talk about in your chapter, including the theme of intergenerational trauma as well as intersectionality and of identity, and so on. Well, let’s start with talking about the intergenerational trauma and a little bit about your mother’s story and the trauma that she experienced growing up.
Tiffany Benford: Yeah. So my mother was grew up in during the Cuban Revolution and my grandfather worked for the Batista Batista regime, which was in power. and they were separated. They tried to leave Cuba, and during the Revolution my family had a rift of what side was gonna require, allow safety, and after coming after a storm, actually blew my family and other families back to Cuba. They were separated then, and my.
Carolyn Ross MD: So your mother and her parents tried to escape Cuba. They were so one of the boat people who tried to leave during the Batista regime, but blew them back into Cuba. Is that.
Tiffany Benford: Basically a shipwreck of. I don’t think they got very far. Remember, Cuba and Florida are not. They’re only 90 miles right from the point, so it didn’t take much to get them back. But they were, you know, when I hear the stories of my family, my mom talks about this joy of feeling like over on other land. And then they were met with militia. That was the resistance, and and where my grandparents were imprisoned for basically, my mom remembers it from about 7 to 14/13 they were in her, and her siblings, which she has 5, were all put in what were known as like almost like detention camps of more like orphans with nuns, and you know a lot of indoctrination, and she did not connect with her parents again until they were finally allotted like resettlement, and then, when they resettled in the Us. They were actually sent to Seattle, Washington, where they had never seen snow.
Carolyn Ross MD: Oh, my goodness! And how many people spoke Spanish! There.
Tiffany Benford: Not like not, you know. I’m sure some. But she didn’t know many of them, and when they did, finally, in my mother’s senior year she talks about being ripped out of a community she had just started to sort of get used to, and then, being brought back to Miami, where was the joy of being around Cuban culture. But there was that developmental writ again that happens which I think is. So, for the 1st rift was when she was put in the orphanage in Cuba.
Carolyn Ross MD: After after she was separated from her parents. When they blew back into Cuba.
Tiffany Benford: Right.
Carolyn Ross MD: Trying to escape, and then she settles in Seattle and kind of acclim sizes, or becomes used to that, and then she’s ripped again when your parents decide to move back to Miami. But these were these were all. I’m assuming pretty traumatic experiences for.
Tiffany Benford: Yes, and I think one of the things that was very important that does really talk about how it impacts me is the messaging at home.There’s so many strengths in my family in my Cuban family, but the messaging was assimilate, you know. Being any kind of other having darker skin, which my grandfather was darker than my grandmother. My mom had more wild, green, natural kinky what is associated with Afrocentric black hair as we know it.
And so there was a lot of mixed messaging. And remember, this is also occurring in the revolution of the gender revolution in the Us. So we have to think about the sociopolitical impact of the messaging in the Us. Compared to what my mother experienced in Cuba. So it’s very different.
And there was a lot of. Don’t talk about our experience because my grandfather was severely traumatized in prison. The law of the land in the home was, We don’t talk about Cuba.
We come here. We are proud of our culture. We do not speak English in our home but speak English. Outside the home, you know, date, lighter skin, white men who have the ability to take care of you with some of the messaging.
Because there was the gender dynamic as well in the Latino community there was, especially during the fifties and sixties. The traditional mindset was, you know, you become a wife, you become a wife, you have children.
Carolyn Ross MD: Get married, have kids.
Tiffany Benford: Got married. There wasn’t a lot of pursuing education. There wasn’t a lot of pursue for the sake of self. Which I think did impact for sure my growing up, and my brothers growing up.
Carolyn Ross MD: So by now. You when you come into the family, there are already 2 generations of trauma. Your grandparents were traumatized in prison. Your mom was traumatized both in the the Orphanage or Detention camp, where she lived, and then, being, you know, separated from her parents for 7 years of really important child development years, and then being taken to a new place, Seattle, Washington, and then back to Miami. All of these things were compounding, I would expect and.
Tiffany Benford: Happening before 18 for my mom and her sit most of her siblings, and the one thing I did leave out is, my grandmother gave birth in in while in prison and she gave birth to what we would now see as an individual who was presenting with mute autism so.
Carolyn Ross MD: It’s okay.Tiffany
Tiffany Benford: And and he lived with her until his almost death in his early fifties, only a couple about 4 years ago.
Carolyn Ross MD: So they’re living in Miami, when your mother marries, your father and when you’re born.
Tiffany Benford: Yeah. And this is the early eighties.
Carolyn Ross MD: This is the early eighties now. So how looking back, how did their trauma impact your growing up years.
Tiffany Benford: so I think when we’re talking about intergenerational trauma and the impact one of the things for me, that’s important both in my life and with my clients is remembering that trauma impacts our nervous system in the body. And when we’re dealing with a parent or any caretaker, any caretaker.
Carolyn Ross MD: With a dysregulated nervous system.
Tiffany Benford: Where you know. If you think about when a wave hits you and you come up for air and you get the air. But if a wave, if there’s wave after wave after wave you’re gonna be gasping rather than grabbing a normal breath. And I feel like that is what I saw sometimes play out in my life. With my mom’s with the the parenting there was dysfunctionality due to addiction, which is natural, naturally or not natural, but usually can be seen in.
Carolyn Ross MD: Highly associated with trauma.
Tiffany Benford: Highly associated better terminology. So when you dealt with a dysregulated parent, how I got messages around even, and these are subtle messages. These were not direct. I think that’s very important. These were not direct messages of my mom sitting down and telling me this per se, but messages I heard from my grandparents to my mom, or in the ways in the behaviors of we don’t talk about what happens in our home. We don’t talk about what happened in Cuba. emotions that were big were not to be expressed. And my mother, my mother, specifically had issues as my my brother and I got older. Actually, funny enough, right around 7, 8, 9, 10.
Carolyn Ross MD: Yeah, that’s very interesting. Yeah. Cause I’ve had so many patients who recognize the same thing that they start that their parents started having issues at the same age where they were had been traumatized. Yeah.
Tiffany Benford: Right and and so so I so I heard these messages, in subtle ways, I think, one of the gifts I had and one of the gifts that a lot of people can have that experience. Trauma to early development. Is you become what we know now can turn into hyper, vigilant right? But that allows you to read the room that allows you to connect with emotions, and I see that play out in some gifted ways in my life was through dance, through writing, through my love of music. Those were also resilient strategies that I did see my family have, which I think is important. We often think only about the impact negatively, but there were a lot of things that I saw my mom do but mostly it was that lack of presence I felt in my mom’s own body.
Yeah, at home. I didn’t know that then, but what I experienced was a sense of loneliness.
Carolyn Ross MD: Hmm.
Tiffany Benford: All the time. I also would go to school and be like am I allowed to? Oh, my blackness! Oh, my brownness! Can I, even I, had my dad’s good hair. These were the terminologies. It was straighter hair where I envied my mother’s hair. I felt like it was the symbol of our culture, and how free the Cuban music and the food, and all of the things that I love
I saw was letting her hair down and being natural, letting her skin be dark. But the message I think my mom internalized was that that meant she wasn’t good enough.
Carolyn Ross MD: Yeah, we’re not. So that pressure to assimilate that you talked about. So one of the parenting strategies or one of the parenting issues that you talked about in your chapter has to do with how your mother’s own emotional dysregulation made it difficult for her to accept your emotions like you weren’t like, you said, not able to express anything that was, you know, to get really upset, or to get really sad, or anything like that.
Tiffany Benford: Right right, and also being the older sister, which you’ll see this, I think, in many black and brown families, but being the eldest sibling. I was also expected to do a lot of parenting at a young age when I had no idea what parenting was. Nor nor nor should we? Right? We’re our, we’re children ourselves. So that my mom would would sometimes leave a lot. She herself did not experience addiction in the form of substance or alcohol, which was very interesting, but she did marry or attract usually partners that were experienced addiction or high forms of violence and aggression, and.
Carolyn Ross MD: There was domestic violence that you witnessed in the family, as well.
Tiffany Benford: Yes, not with my biological father, but with the father of my brother.
Carolyn Ross MD: Yeah. So all of these kinds of things are on the adverse childhood experiences study, you know, showing that it puts the children at much higher risk for addictions and. You know, eating eating disorders, and so much more, you know, depression, anxiety, etc. So when you became an adult, and what drew you to work with people with trauma like yourself and you in your bio. We talked about that you had healed from complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Can you say a little bit about this complex Ptsd, and then about.
Your adulthood, and how you came into this field.
Tiffany Benford: Yeah. So I think, you know, I hit a bottom at 23, and when you, when I say hit bottom. it was a moment of leveling out despair physically, emotionally, mentally. Even getting great grades.
I at 17 experienced. You know, my father leaving and having gambling, I was on my own by the time I was 17, and so from 17 to 23, which is also developmental, for, you know, going into younger adulthood. I had my own afflictions with addiction, and also working in South Florida. The pressure of colorism, the messaging around weight around. You know, I worked in a restaurant nightlife entertainment before getting into the field of clinical education. Before I was, I was a nontraditional student. I went back to college at almost 25, or went to college for the 1st time at 25.
Carolyn Ross MD: Okay.
Tiffany Benford: And so my journey of recovery began at 23 years old, when from 13 to 23, I had really no substantial relationship with my own mother.
Carolyn Ross MD: Okay.
Tiffany Benford: So at 23 I reached out to my mother in a moment of despair. I call it my divine moment, you know God! Moment my Aha! And I reached out, I think, from almost like that guttural feeling primal, of needing mom and I reached out, and it was the 1st time. My mother, I think, was stable enough had had some time of her own healing.
Carolyn Ross MD: Okay.
Tiffany Benford: And had been in a new partnership where she was loved and did not have a partner struggling with these things that she said, yes, come, and it was about 2 years of living with my mom and going to a trauma institute in Miami and getting with a trauma, informed therapist who understood the and what intergenerational trauma was.
Carolyn Ross MD: Yeah.
Tiffany Benford: Defined it for me, and therapy helped me make connections around. Not so much my body yet about. Where does joy live? Where does pain live in my body, but just started getting me into my body.
Carolyn Ross MD: Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah.
Tiffany Benford: Yeah. Cause I see, I think one of the things to to see to really point out is the disassociation that can happen. The disconnect from our own bodies. I saw that day out with my mother, that even birthing children. It was a process that she felt disconnected from.
Carolyn Ross MD: Yeah. So the disconnection and loneliness that you experienced was part of the trauma that you had gone through. What are some of the other examples of intergenerational trauma that maybe you’ve seen in some of your clients.
Tiffany Benford: Yeah.I see the I see the, the the struggle for folks to really particularly in the last. I’d say 10 years younger folks to not personalize when they experience anxiety, not personalize, and having a microaggression. And what I mean by that is being in class and somebody making an offhand remark about
You know, police violence on the on the television or different things that are happening in the sociopolitical climate.
Carolyn Ross MD: And that taking up their whole day. Yeah. trigger being a trigger, I think you had an experience that you talked about in your chapter where someone asked you, What are you mixed with.
Tiffany Benford: Yes, yes.
Carolyn Ross MD: That’s a microaggression.
Tiffany Benford: Yes, and I was actually written up almost at my job for using humor, which is one of the ways that we often, you know, Cope, by saying, I’m mixed with vodka to this, you know, woman at a brunch, who was a Southern white, affluent woman from from all you know, means of presentation, and even the event that I was doing so. So just thinking of that in institutions where we work. The different ways that I think we don’t even realize. Sometimes we pack our armor before we get into the car, the bus, the train. the bike, whatever it is, even walking to wherever we have to go. That armor is significantly higher. When you’re a person of color with multi identity. When you’re a queer person when you’re a person who is female bodied, and has maybe experienced violence, or has felt the threat of violence just by being identifying as femme or as a woman.
Carolyn Ross MD: So I want to read just a sentence from your chapter, you said, while from the outside we may see an individual struggle with addiction thoughts of suicide, or acts of self-harm. These behaviors are often the outcome of intergenerational trauma that impacts the individual, their family of origin, and their chosen family as well as the broader community. So it can be as you as you go on to say, it can be a touchstone for transformational growth. In other words, growth from deep, deep pain. So let’s let’s shift a little bit and talk about the multi identity aspect in your chapter you wrote that your story is told through the lens of a cisgender, multi-ethnic, queer femme 1st generation, Cuban American. So how did all of those identities affect your lived experience? And how you navigate the world.
Tiffany Benford: One. I think I was a very late bloomer because of the impact of development on my brain.
Carolyn Ross MD: You know.
Tiffany Benford: As also let’s you know, I want to remind you in my story, religion, and not religion. Necessarily that I now practice. But spirituality is a big part of my grounding my personal grounding. What’s facilitated and accelerated my personal transformation. That doesn’t mean anybody has to be religious like the folks that my clients identify from all over the place in terms of spirituality or belief or atheism. But I will say for those different identities.
It wasn’t safe for me to say that I was experiencing liking both genders in my home. so I didn’t know until college. Really, I had had experiences but I didn’t know until I had education presented to me with language for the 1st time, saying, Oh, this is what oppression is.
Carolyn Ross MD: Hmm.
Tiffany Benford: Oh, this is what like this is. This is what I saw my mom go through. This is what I saw. You know, there was like, I really do think there is an important piece of What education did to help me process the different ways. So another way that this comes up is, I’m often seen. As you know, you’re married to a mixed black men who’s an activist in social justice circles. And together we’re this great activist partnership. But then that means a lot of my queer identity doesn’t get seen because I’m seeing as, oh, you’re found presenting. And you’re next to a man.
The and so the safety issue of is it safe for me to be my full authentic self? Was a question that always came up, and I think it was that question grappling with it and starting to make headway in my early twenties. That then said, I want to help other people.
Carolyn Ross MD: Okay.
Tiffany Benford: And also I started having conversations with people about these things, and recognized when we talked about them we had a sense of joy and release that. Oh, you’re not alone.
Carolyn Ross MD: Hi.
Tiffany Benford: I’m not the only person that like me and my friends always talk about like the mixed kid club. You know how code switching becomes almost like their 1st language.
Carolyn Ross MD: Yeah, huh.
Tiffany Benford: Does that make sense.
Carolyn Ross MD: Absolutely. Makes sense. Yeah.
Tiffany Benford: Yeah.
Carolyn Ross MD: So how do you go in the last little bits that we have here? How do you go about helping your clients? Interrupt that cycle of intergenerational trauma and build the authentic life that you’re mentioning.
Tiffany Benford: Yeah, I will say that there’s 3 questions I ask everybody, and they’re questions that I even ask my son. And it’s the questions that I asked my partner when we started dating, and he had a panic attack.
Carolyn Ross MD: Because.
Tiffany Benford: Was feeling love for the 1st time, you know. when you’re going somewhere, or you’re going towards a person, a meeting, an event, anything.
How are you feeling when you’re going there?
Carolyn Ross MD: Okay.
Tiffany Benford: Do you feel when you get there? And how do you feel when you leave? So basically, I presented, sorry, were you gonna say something.
Carolyn Ross MD: I was just gonna say, what do you learn from those questions, from the answers to those questions.
Tiffany Benford: What is going on in my body right like, if you’re going to an event. And every time you go to that space right? And there’s like a client or myself. I’ll I’ll I’m experiencing a clench in my stomach.
I’ve had to learn how to differentiate it. There’s general fear and anxiety that comes up with new things in life. But then there’s deeper sense of this doesn’t feel good to me. I think, when we are experiencing trauma in our bodies, or we, we experience intergenerational trauma. We can be so disconnected from our gut.
Right? So those 3 questions allow my clients to tap into what’s happening in my body every time I go here. When I come back. How do I feel when I am around this person?
How do I feel about myself?
Do I feel safe? What am I thinking, feeling, and how do I? How? Where does that live?
Carolyn Ross MD: So I think it also helps to people to ground themselves in reality rather than to be disconnected as many or dissociated as many trauma survivors are, you know, they immediately dissociate from their feelings as a as a form of protection. Really.
Tiffany Benford: And I and I also I I think writing has been a huge practice, but also my practice, that I began of exploring somatics meaning really somatic therapy about how does trauma live in our actual biology?
Carolyn Ross MD: Yeah.
Tiffany Benford: I was very interested in your Ted talk that talks about the epigenetic. Yeah, of of how memory, you know, we see now what my mom even went through in pregnancy.
We see now that research is tying that we can feel those like you said activators. So I also think that I often tell one of the things that I did, but also what I help my clients do is figure out who who are they? What are their parts?
What are the what is the narrative that we tell ourselves. I think that abundance mindset is something I talk a lot about. I’ll define that as rather than going down, the line of my hair is not good enough, or I’m not black enough to be in this space. I’m not educated enough to take up space. I can’t do this because my parents never said I could or because my grandparents didn’t think I should, or because a queer person doesn’t do these things.
Whatever the case, as a married person, I invite people to be open to the idea ofchallenging those narratives and 1st affirming. look at where you are now. You know I had to do that today. Before this meeting I had to remind myself, because I can still struggle with imposter syndrome. And people say, Oh, you worked at this, you went. You’ve done that. You don’t have that.
Well, yes, I do. I do still struggle with these things, and I think the 1st step is being honest about this exists in our families.
I talk to my son. I invite my son to have big emotions.
Carolyn Ross MD: Hmm.
Tiffany Benford: I invite him to tell me which way he wants to do his hair.
Carolyn Ross MD: What? What are the kids saying in school? What are his difficulties.
Tiffany Benford: We have a lot of open.
Carolyn Ross MD: Yeah, that communication is so important for him to learn to feel safe, which many people who are survivors of trauma never had the opportunity to learn to feel, be themselves and feel safe, being themselves. Yeah.
Tiffany Benford:: Yeah. And when he has a bad day, and screams, and I have all the things that I’m sure my mother had right of. Oh, my God! What do I do? And instead of running away or topping it off with some sort of numbing agent, I tell my 9 year old son. Let’s get into the let’s get into the shower, and we’re gonna rinse for 3 min, which is it’s actually a nervous system. Reset.
Yeah, I, I take these little things. And I just say, let’s try this and see what works. And it’s amazing how it shifts the energy in the body and in the room.
Carolyn Ross MD: Wow! You have such a rich amount of lived experience. We could do 2 or 3 of these interviews, and it’s been a pleasure talking to you and.
Tiffany Benford: Thank you.
Carolyn Ross MD: Hopefully as time goes on. Maybe I can have you back again because we didn’t touch on a lot of things that that you have experienced. But I hope the listeners have really gotten the message that you put in your chapter and encourage people obviously to read your chapter because it’s even richer than this interview is. So thanks, thanks again, Tiffany, for being on this show, and I really appreciate all the hard work that you’re doing.
Tiffany Benford: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it as well.
