Front Porch Therapy
The front porch is a staple in southern culture. It’s where stories come to life, rocking chairs creak, hands shuck corn, grandpa sips sweet tea, and kids listen at the edge of grown-up talk. It’s where joy and grief both settle into the air, braided together with the hum of cicadas. It’s also sometimes where silence is taught, the kind that keeps certain wounds hidden and where trauma passes quietly from one generation to the next.
What we inherit isn’t only our great-great grandma’s coveted secret cornbread recipe. Sometimes it’s the weight of shame, the rules no one names, the grief no one touches. On porches, those patterns can echo for decades. You learn not to ask questions, not to speak too loud, not to cry where others can see. That’s how trauma becomes tradition.
Emerging neuroscience tells us that trauma doesn’t just disappear, it lives in the body, shaping nervous systems, and it can even be passed on through generations. Clinicians refer to this as epigenetics: the way stress, neglect, and trauma can leave chemical “marks” on our genes. These marks don’t change the DNA itself, but they influence how genes are expressed, kind of like turning dimmer switches up or down.
For example, a grandparent who lived through war or poverty may have had their stress-response system turned permanently “on high.” That sensitivity can be passed down, so that a grandchild grows up more prone to anxiety, hypervigilance, or emotional shutdown even without experiencing the original trauma firsthand.
What we inherit isn’t only secret recipes or family sayings. Sometimes it’s the weight of shame, the rules no one names, the grief no one touches. On porches, those patterns can echo for decades.
A gentle shift in tradition can be as simple as reframing a mindset and still hold the value of the customs being shared. As a clinician, I know the power in naming and validating feelings, events, —traumas. Front porches can be a reclamation of sovereignty, a place where cycles are interrupted, where what once weighed heavy is spoken out loud, and where healing becomes an act of choice.
Because healing, like the porch, belongs to ordinary life. It doesn’t have to be sterile or clinical to matter. It can be as familiar as the sound of a swing chain, as steady as a chair on old wood, as brave as saying: the story changes here with me.
