HUNTER: Trauma and community healing

We’ve all experienced the impact of horrendously dangerous air quality. Some of us experienced the effects of the heat dome more severely than others. During the wildfires in the summer of 2021, my mom was an evacuee and my in-laws were on evacuation alert. Other family and friends lost property and livestock. These climatic events have only added to the collective trauma we’re already experiencing as the result of the pandemic.

These are not small events and we certainly can’t ignore the fact these events are becoming more severe, most frequent and more intense. We have no choice but to acknowledge the harm we’re doing to the Earth through our policies, actions and inactions. We need to reframe our relationship with our environment and reprioritize.

As individuals, we need to learn to be more comfortable with uncomfortable truths. Whether that means listening to the trauma of others and validating their experience or naming our own traumas so we can move on from those experiences and start to heal.

The pandemic has led to divisiveness, sure. But I would argue it’s more accurate to say it served to highlight cracks in our society and led to the widening of those fissures.

In his address, Wente noted, “Trauma clusters around other trauma and isn’t distributed equally. This has served to reveal the cracks in our society – so many and so much so that to ignore them would mean being complicit in their widening.”

Trauma is often hard to see. People are good at hiding it or masking it because trauma makes others uncomfortable. I know this to be true from my own experience. There’s a reason why I’m only starting to talk about this aspect of myself now. I don’t know exactly why it makes others uncomfortable, but I wonder if it’s because so many others carry their own trauma and seeing trauma in others is a reminder of their own.

Trauma also carries a lot of shame, even when it’s not our fault. The shame keeps the trauma fresh; it means we struggle to move past it.

Brené Brown, American professor, lecturer, author and podcast host, known for her research on shame, vulnerability and leadership, says this about shame: “We desperately don’t want to experience shame, and we’re not willing to talk about it. Yet the only way to resolve shame is to talk about it. Maybe we’re afraid of topics like love and shame. Most of us like safety, certainty and clarity. Shame and love are grounded in vulnerability and tenderness.”

I’ve been thinking about trauma, shame and vulnerability a lot in the context of the community discord around the very challenging and complex issues of homelessness, substance use disorder and mental health. These topics or so intricately wound together they can’t be simplified and untangled. Where we can start though, is with compassion and a recognition that perhaps we might share some common ground with those we visibly see suffering in our community.

Maybe the visible suffering makes us uncomfortable because, on some level, it reminds us of our own trauma or evokes feelings of shame. We might not even know why we feel or react the way we do, all we know is we’re uncomfortable.

One certainty is that every individual we see suffering has also experienced trauma. I’m willing to bet they also feel shame and are uncomfortable. If you have not yet had a chance to read some of the books by Dr. Gabor Maté on this topic — In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts or his recently released The Myth of Normal — I highly recommend adding them to your reading list.

Wente suggested that, in order for us to heal as a community, “we must confront the trauma that has been done and that is being done right now. Covid has provided us a lens through which to understand the trauma we mutually share while adding to it. We need to heed its warning [by reacting] to it as a community that understands our mutual health is what’s important.”

I think this statement is profoundly insightful and pertinent to anyone who is feeding into the sometimes appalling narrative around our vulnerable citizens. I challenge us all to pause and check our own biases and ask how we can contribute to the healing instead of actively turning those cracks into fissures.

The need to heal extends beyond each of us and into our relationship with other communities and with the natural world.

As Wente stated, “healing is what will allow the Earth to continue to support us as humans, what will help us live in right relations with each other and everything around us.”

“To not do so only means trauma will continue and healing will be harder for us as humans and for the communities that support us, both human and otherwise.”

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.

by Sadie Hunter

HUNTER: Trauma and community healing

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