Interpersonal and Relational psychoanalysts are comfortable approaching categories of race and gender as socially constructed—and as fertile ground for the exploration and co-construction of new meanings in the process of psychotherapy. Using myself as an example, I focus on a particular aspect of gender, ethnicity, and race, and how their meanings are sometimes forged in a family environment where the sense of identity is part and parcel of ongoing social trauma, and where survival means staying within the invisible boundaries set by the anxiety-laden compromises of previous generations. Of central concern is the role of witness and the conflicts and complexities that come with it.