by Dr. Beverly Wallace
Living Into Time
“If I did not think, I would be much better. If I did not feel, I would be much better”.
The quote above (I don’t know where I got it from) is not the human condition. We think, we feel, and we try to be much better. Still sometimes we don’t want to think nor feel. This is especially the case when we are living with trauma and when grief and loss enters in.
Trauma causes a sense of dis-ease. Trauma is an event so frightening that the brain reacts out of a sense of survival or a need for protection. Persons’ nervous systems automatically responses with the need to fight due to a fear of annihilation, to flee from the situation whether the danger is real or perceived or to become immobilize and freeze. The experience effects the person’s whole being. Relationships are strained and the psychological, spiritual, and physical body takes a toll. According to Franz Fanon, “the ill human is the human with no family, no love, no human relations and no communion with a community. This disconnection causes additional dis-ease. Lives are disoriented. Families are fragmented and peoples’ sense of identity is often in question. This is the case of the traumatized people”. This is also the life of BIPOC people and is even more complicated during a season of time when the world is unsafe.
We are living through a time when we see how unsafe the world could be. We see children, and women and men traumatized. While the wars of the world are not in our backyard, they come to us through the media and whether you know it or not, these scenes, these stories, they impact us – they should impact us.
I have been given the honor to walk with you during this unparallel season; to engage your synod in work on Trauma Informed Care. The next ten months I will introduce you to not only what is Trauma but also how we as a collective may engage in care of souls including our own souls during a time when the world appears not to be safe. Might I ask that you begin this journey with simply acknowledging this truth – that in our lives, the lives we often take for granted that the world appears not to be safe. Realize too that there is nothing new under the sun (I believe I read that somewhere in a book we call our sacred text). And then I would ask you to simply breathe – breathe deeply, breathe livingly knowing too that God is with us.
Next month I will share with how to engage the world through a trauma informed during the month that begins our busy season – Thanksgiving and Advent as we live into time. Look also for the 1st of 10 videos entitled “Train-in-10 with Dr. Bev” to be posted the 4th Friday of each month –
May you think and feel the presence of your being and think and feel the presence of God.
Trauma-Informed Care Through a Justice Lens; A Series with Rev. Dr. Beverly Wallace: #1
