When people begin to talk about their story, assume it, and reflect on it, (they) find meaning and significance in what they have lived through. … This is what allows us to go forward in life.” ~ Martha Cabrera, Living and Surviving in a Multiply-wounded Country
This is just one movement in the cycle of healing from trauma and building resilience. It is how we begin the process of making meaning out of what happened. It is a series of fluid movements that include spaces and practices that help us mourn and grieve, name fears, learn how to accept losses, memorialize what we must (through rituals, ceremonies, and artifacts), reflect together on any root causes of the trauma (traumatic events, various systems of violence, historical harms, injustices), and acknowledge the multiple stories present in our community. Some will understand and embrace these movements, some will not. But, it is important to press on and create space for these movements to unfold within a community.
Trauma can be understood as an emotional wounding. Traumatic stress can be understood as lacking any form of effective control or power in the midst of vulnerability and uncertainty where life feels destabilized or threatened.
In trauma-responsive care, there are four pillars critical to diminishing traumatic stress, two of which are voice and choice. As I define it, voice is the facilitation of a person’s self-directed power of the will to bring into time and space the feelings and thoughts that are provoked by an outside circumstance and internalized. If these feelings and thoughts are restricted or left as internalized realities, they can become a form of stress that activates neurochemical reactions with physiological consequences (ever had a stress headache?). At worse, in time, they can create cycles of varied forms of violence, inward or outward, not just as violence in physical forms, but violence in terms of emotion, relational, verbal, or self-harm. Remember Dr. King’s words when he said, “Riots are the language of the unheard?” When pain is not given a voice it turns to violence. But when pain is given a voice it turns it turns to perseverance. This perseverance becomes resilience.
When voice is reclaimed and re-centered, it becomes a form of power that brings into the open what is hidden and offers a sense of stability amidst vulnerability. When voice is reclaimed and re-centered in a community, it can create relational connections and the new possibilities of new choices. It naturally reveals where belonging and inclusion can be found. We are reminded that we are not alone in the harms or vulnerabilities and that we still have some sense of influence in the situation. But, when voice feels unheard or dismissed, it can be distressing, threatening and compound the vulnerability and lack of stability.
Creating space for voices to be reclaimed, re-centered and heard is something I’ve experienced in different ways within the church I serve. It has been life-giving and shaped who we are and are becoming, even in all the tension it has sometimes created. It is a messy and bumpy process, but one I believe God wants to guide. It is critical we press on if we are to become a community where hospitality and compassion are present and human flourishing possible.
Judith Herman in her work, Trauma and Recovery, says, “No intervention that takes power away from the survivor can possibly foster her recovery, no matter how much it appears to be in her immediate best interest.”
Too many times we want to do something for someone who is hurting. It is a beautiful and noble desire. But anything we do must begin with simply being present. By presence I mean a kind of with-ness committed to solidarity and compassionate listening to another person’s story or experience of trauma without judging it. Sometimes the first expression of a survivor’s power is the strength and courage to give their experience a voice. When we demean, dismiss or devalue another’s voiced experience, we take their power away and do harm.
All of this is a process. I am still learning how to listen and be with them in their story. I am still learning how to de-center myself. I am still learning to resist the urge to justify another person’s experience or over-identify with it. In all of this learning, I have discovered how precious it is to be invited into these stories and hold space for all that is shared in whatever way I can. Presence, solidarity, compassionate listening without judging — all of us can do this for someone living through traumatic stress or in trauma-response. We can create space where healing becomes just a little more possible for them –- for all of us. Then, whatever needs the harms or trauma created, we can find a way forward as neighbors who share a common humanity and together do the work of repair.
* The information contained in this article is for informational purposes only and is not intended as medical or therapeutic advice.
The Rev. Fred Liggin is one of the pastors at Williamsburg Christian Church and founder & co-executive director of Faith Community Development & Training with 3e Restoration Inc.
