Trauma: a story of hope

Any story about healing trauma is a story of hope, and a story for all of us.  Because we all carry trauma. Whether we think of ourselves this way or not.

We know now that we all carry trauma because we know that trauma is transmitted intergenerationally.  And we know that in the U.S., our country was built on--and continues to be sustained by--legacies of trauma: violence against Native Africans, violence against African Americans, violence against Latinos, violence against Asians, violence against Jews and Muslims, violence against women.

Anyone born from ancestors of these legacies is likely marked by residual trauma (which is pretty much all of us). 

We also know that trauma becomes codified and transmitted through institutional policies and practices that keep the traumatic past inscribed into our collective present. Sometimes institutions designed to heal us inadvertently become re-traumatizing to the very people who are supposed to benefit from them. Through these institutions,trauma-inducing ways of being together are transmitted from generation to generation and across populations. 

Trauma's reach is so far and wide. So much so that none of us go completely untouched. 

But while we all all carry legacies of trauma; we also all carry legacies of resilience. Our ancestors were people who were able to bounce back; people who survived the worst of things; people who had cultural practices and relationships that helped them heal--enough to survive, anyway, and beget the next generation. 

And the really great news? 

Resilience can be grown. It is grown through healing and empowering relationships and practices; through noticing when and how we do effectively bounce back from hardship; through activities that promote mindful attention to the body; and through interventions that focus on the hurt in the right proportion and intensity as the cultivation of safety.

It's always a balancing act to make sure we are building resilience when we peak into trauma (because those of us who carry unresolved trauma easily tip into re-traumatization!). One of the best ways to increase safety is in the context of caring, supportive relationships and communities.  Communities where trauma, resilience and safety can be named and practiced together. We are social creatures after all, we heal best together. 

We really are in it together, as Nadine Burke Harris says. And in truth, while we can cultivate resilience individually, ultimately, to get all the way home to wellness, we need each other. 

You are invited to participate in our collective path to build individual and community resilience by screening this film. Do it with someone who will be kind, present, connected while you watch together. If you can do it in such a community, all the better.

If you are in the Bay Area, it's not too late to buy your tickets to the screening that will happen this evening in Oakland. But if you can't come, don't worry. You can host your own screening in your neck of the woods! Or... wait for the DVD to come out.

But don't go it alone. This brave, tender story about hope and healing is one to watch with someone else who gets it.    

Let's keep building resilience together!

All my heart,

Angela