Racial Trauma and Culturally Responsive Care: Ashley McGirt-Adair's The Cost of Healing in Silence

In this episode, MacKenzie Green and I talk with Ashley McGirt-Adair about her new book, The Cost of Healing in Silence, and the deep, often overlooked impact of racial trauma within healthcare systems. Ashley shares how her personal experiences, her grandmother’s legacy, and over a decade of work as a trauma therapist shaped her approach to culturally responsive care.

Listen to hear about:

• The concept of racial trauma as real trauma, and why naming it explicitly matters in both therapy and broader cultural conversations.
• How systemic bias in healthcare shows up in real, life-threatening ways (misread medical devices, dismissal of symptoms, lack of advocacy).
• The burden of self-advocacy in medical spaces, especially for Black patients and families navigating emergencies or chronic illness.
• Ashley’s idea of moving from “hope” to “commitment,” and how small, individual actions create meaningful systemic change.
• The idea of “homecoming to self” through culture, ancestry, music, food, and joy as a necessary counterbalance to generational trauma.

And grab a copy of The Cost of Healing in Silence here!

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Gare Billings @gareindeedreads

Steph Lauer @books.in.badgerland

Halley Sutton @halleysutton25

Brian Watson @readingwithbrian

MacKenzie Green @missusa2mba

Erin Ashley @bellametaphor