Ancestral Trauma and Healing: The Trey Reed Case

In this episode, Isabel Franke explores the tragic death of Demartravion “Trey” Reed, a 21-year-old Delta State University student found hanging on campus in September 2025. While officials have said there is no evidence of foul play, Trey’s family and community are raising serious questions.

This conversation goes beyond the headlines to unpack the historical weight of lynching, the symbolism of hangings in Black and BIPOC communities, and the ancestral trauma carried in our DNA, as explained in My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem. Isabel dives into how systems of power use fear and separation to control, why unity across BIPOC communities is essential, and how spiritual grounding can transform inherited wounds into collective healing.

✨ Topics covered:

• Trey Reed’s story and why his death resonates so deeply
• The history and motivations of lynching in America
• Why the 2022 Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act still matters today
• How ancestral trauma is stored in the body and passed down through generations
• The role of fear, division, and political rhetoric in shaping public response
• Spiritual practices to heal trauma and choose unity over separation

This episode is a call to remember: Truth will be revealed. Healing is possible. Justice is sacred. Unity is our power.

Book mentioned: My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Trey Reed's Case
• 4:21 Lynching History and Racial Terror
• 9:06 Systems of Control and Isolation
• 14:40 Trauma Stored in DNA
• 17:00 Pathways to Healing Ancestral Wounds
• 19:25 Unity as Medicine for Collective Healing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everybody and welcome back to Real Talk with Isabel. So thank you guys for following, liking, listening, subscribing all of that. I hope you guys enjoyed last week's podcast. This week's podcast definitely different than last week's, today's, kind of more of a really serious, serious subject. If you guys don't know, I used to have a podcast before called Motherland. We talked a lot about BIPOC and spirituality and how the BIPOC community moves, understanding being a person of color, like how does that work with spirituality? And with that we covered a lot of things that are in our DNA ancestral traumas, how to process through that and whatnot. So go check that out. That's still up. We're no longer recording, but that podcast is still available and I know that people still really enjoy it.

Speaker 1: 1:02

But there was a lot of things that happened this week, as you guys know, in the news here in the United States, so I thought this would be a really great time for us to just kind of talk about it. So today's definitely heavy. It's also sacred, so let's set the intention that may this conversation be guided by truth, compassion and healing. We're definitely going to talk about Trey Reed, if you haven't heard recently, and we'll go over Demar Travion, which that's his full name, but I'm going to say Trey during it. So just letting you know that's what I have. You know, read that he was kind of goes by. So I just want to set the intention that you know that we honor light on this. I know that I'm sure his family, his friends, community is definitely carrying a lot of grief, but I want to just kind of talk. So let's just talk about what happened. I'm like, I'm kind of like how am I even going to hit this? There's so much that I want to say I'm not going to go into my educational background on things or why I kind of coming at this a certain way between being spiritual, loving, understanding you know my own history, the history of others Just, oh, my God, I feel like I'm babbling Okay. There's just, oh my God, I feel like I'm babbling Okay.

Speaker 1: 2:24

On September 15th 2025, trey Reed, a 21-year-old student at Delta State University, was found hanging from a tree near the pickleball courts on campus. The coroner said there was no signs of physical assault and the investigators have reported no evidence of foul play, but Trey's family and community don't accept that as the full truth. His cousin said you know that his cousin was noted saying like, don't let this sweep under the rug. There's been a lot of questions, there's a lot of concerns from the community. They are, you know, ruling this. It seems like right now they're leaning towards that this is suicide. But there has been rumors of broken bones. He was lynched.

Speaker 1: 3:13

What black man is going to lynch himself? Like, make it make sense, it doesn't, it really doesn't, I'm sorry I'm saying that. And especially a black man to lynch himself, you know, hanging from a tree? Like there's so much in context right here that just no, we can't just rule this as a suicide, it just can't. And in the state of Mississippi, like what, I'm not, I'm trying my hardest to stay focused on this, but you know, just the image of a young black man hanging from a tree in Mississippi carries a lot of weight and that can't be separated from history.

Speaker 1: 3:55

When we talk a lot about lynching and the symbolism and lynching, lynching was never just about killing one person. It never was about that. It was a tool of racial terror, especially in the South. Now I'm just going to stick, just trying again I know I'm going to repeat myself sticking to what I can, make this as simple as I can without going this way and this way and this way, but from the late 1800s through the mid-1900s, there's thousands and thousands of Black men, women, children. They were lynched. Mississippi had some of the highest numbers. These weren't private acts of violence, they were literally made public spectacles. If you really dug into history, you understand these were public spectacles. I mean, people brought their families out to watch this. Sometimes they were advertised in advance so people knew it was happening and this was meant to really send a message of, like you need to stay in your place, you need to follow quote these rules. You know, or this could be you. It was a threat, it was a threat and, honestly, a lot of people don't know.

Speaker 1: 5:05

It took until 2022. That's literally just three years ago for the United States to finally pass a federal anti lynching law. Like what? And that just tells you how long this wound has been ignored. Long this wound has been ignored Like this should have been passed years, decades ago, like and it literally just passed three years ago. And even though, like I, you know that's why, like, trey's death doesn't just touch his family or, you know, the campus, it touches the entire collective memory for those of what it means to be Black in America and also I'm going to add this but also to be BIPOC in this country, because this country was built on racial control. It was built on systems of racial control. Yes, it was period. Anyone that wants to argue that we can argue it. I don't really want to right now, but it was built on systems of racial control. Go read your history books, like really history, not even the history books they have in schools Like. Go read the freaking lookup stuff, study, you'll understand.

Speaker 1: 6:21

There's a lot of reasons, going way back when to why do systems of power lean on fear and separation, right? Why and this comes up so much? And and I this is a very hard topic for me to stay focused without being compassionate in the sense of my compassion is going to go haywire, and I'm going to. When people are afraid, they stay silent, they don't ask questions, they turn on each other instead of, you know, turning to each other, and that is what has been the driven, driven thing of that has been happening since I don't care since, like in the last year, this is what has been happening is a sense of like this control, right? People are like why are they building? Because they want the fear.

Speaker 1: 7:21

Fear is control, fear is control and when communities are separated, whether it's Black, indigenous, latin, asian, they're left fighting. We're fighting our struggles in isolation. Right, I am Hispanic. I am Hispanic. I'm going to say that you know and I understand, like I don't know there's so many words for me to say Mexican, hispanic, indigenous, like that is what I am and it is true, we're fighting our struggles in isolation and we have been for so long. Like I did a video that went viral on TikTok. It got muted, it got taken down, it got tons of views, but what I was trying to communicate was just that that we have been fighting our struggles in isolation. Right, people are like where were you know, hispanics during, you know the civil rights movement? I'm like they were literally having the wetback act that's what it was called and counting us out like literally carting and deporting us by the thousands, more than even now. Like they are, they want us isolated, so we lose the chance to see how connected our liberation really is.

Speaker 1: 8:29

Division protects the systems that benefit from our pain. Division protects the systems that benefit from our pain. Unity threatens those systems because together we're too strong to ignore. We're way too strong to ignore. With education, with understanding, we're way too strong to ignore. And this whole thing that happened, it was like I don't care, you can't blow this under the rug, it can't, it can't. I don't really want to talk too much about Charlie Kirk, but even though you know, I feel like there was like this. This is my own feeling of like this racial divide that was trying to be created. But I want to go into like a little bit deeper into, like the spiritual layer, because, you know me, I got to bring it back to the spiritual layer.

Speaker 1: 9:17

There is amazing, amazing book called my Grandmother's Hands.

Speaker 1: 9:22

If you guys haven't had an opportunity, read it. Read it. My Grandmother's Hands, okay, and it talks about how trauma doesn't just live in our minds. It lives in our bodies, in our nervous systems, even in our DNA. The author writes that our bodies are where we fear, hope and react. Our bodies are where we experience most of our pain, pleasure, resilience and joy. That means the terror our ancestors experienced didn't disappear when they passed. It shaped their bodies. That terror shaped their survival instincts and those patterns can be carried forward through generations.

Speaker 1: 10:04

You guys don't need me to quote. You know animal kingdom and show how you know animals have learned how to move a certain way because of their past ancestors. They learned how to get food and learned how to survive. That is the same for us as humans. We have learned how to survive. Right, this trauma in our past has shaped our survival instincts. It is literally part of our DNA.

Speaker 1: 10:26

So when people are like, oh, I don't know why, you don't get over it, it's part of our DNA, it is part of who we have, it is part of our nervous systems and it goes deep. So that's why, when a Black man is found hanging from a tree, it doesn't only hurt Black communities. It reactivates something ancient. It literally reactivates something ancient For Black people. It awakens the memory of slavery, lynching, jim Crow and ongoing racial violence. Right, it stirs the pain of mothers who feared their sons wouldn't make it home and fathers who were stripped of safety and dignity. It's still going. It's still freaking going and it reopens the wounds of being told again and again that your life is disposable, your worth is negotiable. Like, are you freaking serious? Are we really serious? This is what you know. It's not something you just quote. Get over. It's part of how you were created and what you were created in. I hate to say it like that, because that's the truth. It's in your DNA.

Speaker 1: 11:31

Trauma is stored in the DNA. So for indigenous, stored in the DNA. So for indigenous people, right, for indigenous people, I'm going to say it may trigger the memory of massacres, stolen land, boarding schools. Right, for, you know, latinx, hispanic communities. It stores the echoes of colonization, displacement, you know, exploitation. For Asian communities, it recalls, you know it's the fear of exclusion, maybe targeted violence. I can't really say a lot for Asian communities and be really honest, I'm just, I'm not, I don't have Asian in my blood, but I understand they're also part of the BIPOC community Because I think all BIPOC communities and I'm not trying to take this out of the Black communities, because this is way deeper there but I need you to realize the separation that is occurring in some sense of what I feel the system wants it to occur and I'm like that's not going to happen, Because all BIPOC communities knows what it feels like to be othered, to be dehumanized, to carry pain that didn't start with us but still lives in us and that's and I will definitely say there is more ethnicities that feel this right, a lot of people than other people that this is still part of it. But everybody has a historical context of being other, historical context of being other.

Speaker 1: 13:00

So living in our DNA means this Our bodies hold memory, even when our minds don't. It's why our heart races in certain situations, even if we can't explain why. It's why entire communities carry fear in places where violence once occurred. Trauma becomes part of the body's blueprint. As somebody that works with thousands and thousands of people, I have seen people carry trauma from past lives. I have seen people carry traumas from their ancestors. It is why many of us, in this point of time, chose this life to carry and to process that trauma that was carried from our ancestors, to finally heal, work through it, stand in our power, own our voice and come together. We chose this lifetime for a reason. There's hope. Healing also lives in our DNA Joy, resilience, creativity and and love. They're passed down too. They are. I'm proud of my heritage, I am proud of my culture and I'm proud of the strength of who I am because it came before me. And when we choose to heal through movement, breath, community and spirit, we don't just heal ourselves. We shift the line for generations to come. We shift the line for our children. We shift the lines for our future. We heal our ancestors. We do, you, really do, I just I literally have chills.

Speaker 1: 14:39

So how do we begin to work through this ancestral trauma? You first have to name it. We have to stop pretending it doesn't exist. Naming it honors the ancestors who carried it. You have to name it and I think that's at times one of the hardest things, because when we name it, we can get stuck in the naming of it. We can get stuck in the naming of it. We can get stuck in the anger, the frustration, the pain. You have to actually feel that too. You have to feel that too, and in feeling it, you're bringing it back into the body. That, second, you got to bring it back into body.

Speaker 1: 15:05

Healing isn't just intellectual, it's somatic Breathing, praying, grounding, drumming, dancing, crying. These are releasing what's been trapped in the nervous system for thousands and thousands of years because, like I said, it carries in your DNA. So when you were releasing it, you were releasing that of your ancestors as well. And third, we do it together. Trauma isolates, but healing happens in community it does. And fourth, we call in spirit Whatever that looks like for you, god, ancestors, higher self. Healing ancestral pain requires spiritual connection, because this is bigger than us. It is bigger than us. Where do you put it right? Where do you put the pain? Who's there to hold it? Your community, god? Your higher, whatever your higher being is your ancestors. And that's where unity comes in, because trauma divides us. Oppression thrives when we fight alone. But when we stand together Black, indigenous, latinx, asian and beyond we begin to shift the vibration. We start shifting it.

Speaker 1: 16:21

Unity says my struggle is your struggle, your healing is my healing. Unity turns wounds into wisdom, fear into power. And I know people are still fighting this because you're like you don't understand my fight. You know what. You're right. I may not understand your fight. I can understand my ancestors' fights, you understand your ancestors' fights, but we all have a commonality in it. We all are fighting. So, coming together and realizing that, yes, I'm standing with you, I want to help you carry your struggle in your healing and vice versa, unity turns, like I said, wisdom. I can't pause. Unity turns wounds into wisdom and fear into power. It says you cannot silence us, you can't pit us against each other and you can't erase our collective strength. It's the medicine that transforms that inherited wounds into future freedom.

Speaker 1: 17:15

And I don't think I can't stress that enough. I mean, this is why I preach it, but I never feel like I have the right words to give it, like I never feel like I have the right thing to say in getting this, because it's like I'm never trying to brush what happened under the rug. But what happened to me was somebody out there trying to say, hey, pay attention, no, you're not going to put us in our place, nobody needs to be put in their place any longer. I can see where the fear they're trying the control is trying to be added in, but we're so much bigger than that. We're so much bigger than that and that is what I feel as a person of influence is like pay attention, we're bigger than that. You can't control us in the way that you wanted to and I just that's what I feel I do, and I'm not here to read this as a psychic medium. I know I can, but I'm like look, this isn't something that's like hey, you know what, we're going to stand back on this. Absolutely freaking, not, absolutely not, because it rubs people deeper.

Speaker 1: 18:28

It awakened the wounds and the traumas that need to still be healed, and you heal that by fighting back. You heal that by unifying. You. Heal that by releasing and changing the script. It's easier said than done. I know it's easier said than done, but I just felt like that today.

Speaker 1: 18:50

I don't know I needed to talk about it. I need to talk about it. I don't know where this podcast is going to go. I don't know who's going to hear this. I don't even know the comments I'm going to get. I got so much comments when I said this before. People were so angry at me and I'm like you still are paying attention to the division.

Speaker 1: 19:07

Again, I am not trying to at all say like this was a big thing that should not be brushed under the rug, as I feel the authorities are trying. This isn't. This is bigger. So I want to just close out today by just inviting you to pause and just breathe, sending love, sending light to Trey's family, to his soul, to every ancestor who carried this pain, to every ancestor who carried this pain, setting that light out to the generations still to come. See them free, safe and whole. Allowing myself or allowing you to repeat just truth will be revealed Healing is possible, justice is sacred and unity is our power.

Speaker 1: 20:01

This isn't the time to turn on each other. This is the time to turn to each other, and I don't think anyone's turning towards like turning against each other. Please note that. I don't think that. I just feel like the separation that is trying to be created is there. That's all I don't. I'm not saying we're fighting with each other, just feeling like they're trying to create separation, and it's just. It shouldn't be right now. So choose compassion over conflict, right, truth over fear. What feels right to you, right? So, sending again love to Trey's trace family. May his name be remembered. Um, but I guess that's everything for today. So thank you, guys for holding space with me today. Um, yeah, didn't expect this podcast to take this way today, but here we are and I will talk to y'all later.