In this season finale of Poetry in Layers, I share one of the most personal and painful pieces I have ever written. The poem reflects a moment of police brutality I experienced when I was twenty years old. The episode focuses on how racism, mistaken identity, and state violence shape the nervous system long after the event ends. I guide listeners through the poem’s structure, its clipped and repetitive language, and how that form mirrors the rhythm of hypervigilance and survival. Through an IFS and somatic lens, I explore the protectors, the exiles, and the physical responses that emerge when danger comes from those who carry authority.

I expand the frame to explore the cultural and historical patterns that surround these encounters. I reflect on how Black men often become symbols of suspicion, how the phrase be safe becomes a mix of blessing and warning, and how generational trauma lives in breath, posture, and memory.

This episode offers an invitation to witness truth, to honor the body’s story, and to consider how safety and dignity can become shared responsibilities. When I return to the poem a second time, I ask listeners to hear the words and also feel the weight behind them.

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Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:22 - The Importance of Vulnerability

03:36 - The Poem: bus stop Black man

07:00 - The Literary Breakdown

11:41 - The Clinical Breakdown

15:12 - The Cultural Breakdown

18:09 - Reflective Questions

19:27 - Be a Witness

20:50 - Second Reading:l bus stop Black man

23:47 - Closing

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Carl's Publication

The Mis-Execution of a Black Son by Carl Patterson, LPC - https://amzn.to/3UyX6nP

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Book Resources

As Amazon Affiliates, we earn from qualifying purchases

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Poetry Books:

Citizen: An American Lyric — Claudia Rankine

Incendiary Art — Patricia Smith

Stereo(TYPE) — Jonah Mixon-Webster

Psychology / Healing Books

Black Men and Racial Trauma — Yamonte Cooper

Healing Racial Trauma: The Road to Resilience — Sheila Wise Rowe

Racial Trauma: Clinical Strategies and Techniques for Healing Invisible Wounds — Kenneth V. Hardy (Editor)

In this episode of Poetry in Layers, I explore ADHD as more than a diagnosis. I approach it as a landscape shaped by memory, trauma, and the nervous system’s attempts to survive what childhood could not hold. Through my poem what they left me to lift, I trace how attention splinters when presence is inconsistent and how a mind learns to carry absence, instability, and early responsibility long before it has language for any of it.

I look at ADHD clinically and personally, examining how scattered focus can evolve from vigilance, how forgetfulness can emerge from chronic emotional overload, and how endurance becomes a learned posture. The poem moves through fathers who vanish, mothers overwhelmed by their own storms, sisters who grow up too fast, and the quiet ache of wanting to be seen. It also holds the moments of grounding that arrive through fatherhood, when a daughter’s simple gesture becomes enough to steady an entire day.

This episode expands the frame beyond the individual. I reflect on how schools, families, and workplaces often misread ADHD through judgment rather than curiosity and how culture, race, and poverty shape the story of attention. What we call distraction is often the mind’s attempt to manage too many open doors at once.

At its heart, Episode 11 is a meditation on survival, tenderness, and the search for belonging inside a mind that has learned to think in fragments. It is an invitation to look at ADHD, memory, and endurance with compassion and to imagine what becomes possible when we finally feel seen.

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Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:19 - Colors of the Brain

02:50. - The Poem: what they left me to lift

07:30 - The Literary Breakdown

09:10 - The Clinical Breakdown

11:25 - Reflection Questions

12:39 - Second Reading: what they left me to lift

18:07 - Closing

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Carl's Publication

The Mis-Execution of a Black Son by Carl Patterson, LPC - https://amzn.to/3UyX6nP

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Book Resources

As Amazon Affiliates, we earn from qualifying purchases

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Poetry Related Books:

• Not Here — Hieu Minh Nguyen: amazon.com/…/156689509X

• Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude — Ross Gay: amazon.com/…/0822963310

• Night Sky with Exit Wounds — Ocean Vuong: amazon.com/…/155659495X

• The Carrying — Ada Limón: amazon.com/…/1571315136

Psychology Related Books:

• Scattered Minds — Gabor Maté: amazon.com/…/1785042211

• The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk: amazon.com/…/0143127748

• Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors — Janina Fisher:amazon.com/…/0415708230

• Smart but Scattered Adults — Peg Dawson & Richard Guare:amazon.com/…/1462516963

This episode begins with color: blue for sadness, red for panic, yellow for rare hope. I explore how emotion lives in the body long after language fades, how the nervous system paints its own portrait of what we have endured and become.

In “The Color My Brain Remembers,” I move through those shades, tracing how people translate loss, faith, and resilience into something visible. The poem speaks to memory as texture, the way feeling can color a whole room before a single word is spoken.

What follows is a conversation between therapy and art, between the personal and the cultural. I draw from Internal Family Systems and trauma research, as well as the stories our communities carry, showing how color becomes archive, survival code, and language of becoming.

By the end, the focus is not on explaining healing but on recognizing its tone, that quiet, unnamed color between exhaustion and hope.

“The Color My Brain Remembers” invites you to notice the colors that live within your story and to imagine what new shades might rise when you allow them to be seen.

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Chapters:

00:00 - Introduction

00:19 - Colors of the Brain

02:47 - The Poem: the color my brain remembers

06:00 - The Literary Breakdown

08:38 - The Clinical Breakdown

12:40 - Reflection Questions

14:03 - Exploring Colors

15:11 - Second Reading: the color my brain remembers

18:17 - Closing

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Carl's Publication

The Mis-Execution of a Black Son by Carl Patterson, LPC - https://amzn.to/3UyX6nP

---------------

Book Resources

As Amazon Affiliates, we earn from qualifying purchases

---------------

Poetry Related Books

• The Book of Healing — Najwa Zebian

• Poems of Healing — Edited by Karl Kirchwey

• I See You: Healing Through Poetry — Corrina Wilson

Psychology Related Books

• No Bad Parts — Richard C. Schwartz

• The Body Keeps the Score — Bessel van der Kolk

• The Pain We Carry — Natalie Y. Gutierrez

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Carl Patterson is a licensed professional counselor, published author, public speaker, and spoken word artist. Click the link to learn more about Carl and his works - https://www.familysolutionsok.com/carl-patterson

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This podcast is published and produced by Family Solutions Media, a media program of Family Solutions Counseling. For more great content, please check out our LinkTree - https://www.linktr.ee/familysolutionsok