#476: SPOTLIGHT: Regina Harmon

#476: Regina Harmon 

October 6, 2026

A Backbeat of Community

Question for Regina: 

Can you describe an ordinary moment that unexpectedly carried unusual meaning or emotional weight for you? Why do you think it lingered?

Regina's Response: 

In April 2024, I spent less than 24 hours in Louisville, Kentucky. I found my way to the banks of the Ohio River to pay respect to the water, which I try to do as often as I can when I am near a body of water. I had just finished listening to Toni Morrison read her novel, Beloved. I stood there for a long time, then found a place to sit. There wasn’t anything elegant or pretty about where I was by the riverbank. The concrete shore of the river had been spray painted in places and there was some plastic litter bobbing in the water. As I sat there, I began to cry. I cried and cried, I didn’t try to stop myself, and I didn’t care if anyone saw me. I ugly cried because I knew the same Ohio River I was observing flowing so gently was the same river used by more than 50,000 Black people in slaveholding Kentucky to self-emancipate into Ohio through the Underground Railroad; the same river used by Morrison’s protagonist, Sethe, to take her freedom.

There, on the Ohio River shore, I felt the intergenerational trauma of slavery, a feeling, a knowing that is very deep within me. And, I thought about my ability to tap into the courage of my ancestors, their knowledge of navigation, of plants, of music, their care of others to risk their lives—to tap into my ancestral wisdom. I felt the inherited trauma, and I also felt the abundance of my life. The trauma and the abundance combined is what Dr Mariel Buqué calls intergenerational resilience. And, I sat there, on that day with a blue sky, so lovely, so warm and slightly breezy, so ordinary and was able to grieve and celebrate the gift of laying down my sword and shield.