Learning to distinguish between discourses and spaces that are trauma-informed and those that are trauma-led may help us all.
A prerequisite to this, of course, is learning to recognize the trauma in us, around us, and in others. Trauma sits lodged in our psyches, shrapnel from battles with natural catastrophes, disease, or the darkest manifestations of individual or collective human behavior. It shifts our perceptions, rises up unpredictably, resides in our physical bodies even if the trauma was purely mental. Trauma is exhausting, maddening,
In order to recognize our trauma, we must first accept that it exists. (I use the word “accept” here not as resignation, but in the Eastern philosophical sense — the antonym of denial.) This is no small thing. I have seen that some people do not want to be associated with trauma; they often describe it as part of a “victimhood narrative” that rewards weakness to the extent that it incentivizes the manufacturing of oppression. The implication of this logic is that in order to be “strong” and factual, one must not be associated with trauma.
But trauma is a scar borne by survivors, not by victims. Accepting that trauma exists means accepting that we have survived something that was so horrific that it destabilized us at a deep level.
My Guru teaches us that the Source of life is Love. This means that we can always access the Source — which is not touched by the events in this life — to find a place to heal ourselves and others. Viewed through this lens, we humans can appreciate that engaging with and caring for traumatized peoples, animals, and lands call upon our highest qualities — patience, compassion, empathy, comfort, care, nurture, love.
All of this informs what it means to be trauma-informed as we negotiate spaces and conversations. Sometimes these are deeply personal relationships with people we love or are in community with or have taken responsibility for caring for; other times, it’s less personal — perhaps a community that has experienced trauma at the hands of our own, or even with a community towards whom we hold some grievance or pain.
I have seen something disturbing happening in these spaces, though. From many conversations with people across communities across the past few years, I know…
