Reflections On the Case for Healing Our Individual and Collective Trauma and the Deep Costs of Ignoring It

Photo by Molly

The Case For Owning and Healing Our

Individual and Collective Trauma

"We often think of peace as the absence of war, that if powerful countries would reduce their weapon arsenals, we could have peace. But if we look deeply into the weapons, we see our own minds — our own prejudices, fears and ignorance. Even if we transport all the bombs to the moon, the roots of war and the roots of bombs are still there, in our hearts and minds, and sooner or later we will make new bombs. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To prepare for war, to give millions of men and women the opportunity to practice killing day and night in their hearts, is to plant millions of seeds of violence, anger, frustration, and fear that will be passed on for generations to come."

— Thích Nhất Hạnh 

Many painful thoughts and emotions have been coming to me recently and over time... about Kissinger. Hitler. Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump. Bush. Biden. Obama. My mother. And countless others. I see so much of the shadow side and the harm and suffering it causes. I also see the connecting threads woven through it all: trauma.

Those who actively engage in monstrous acts — or are complicit through enabling, silence, turning away, lying, justifying — within their own families, political parties and mainstream media, communities and nations, and across the world do not just fall from the sky. As I have witnessed with the eyes of my heart the horrors that have been perpetrated within my own childhood family and countless other families, within our country and well beyond our borders, and upon the Earth and her inhabitants, I see clearly how unaddressed individual, ancestral, and cultural trauma is at the root of so much endless suffering, death, and destruction.

* * * * *

"Spiritual practice involves, on the one hand, acting out of concern for others' well-being. On the other, it entails transforming ourselves so that we become more readily disposed to do so."

— the Dalai Lama

Many years ago I read about the experiences of Adolf Hitler's childhood in Alice Miller's illuminating, brilliant, and chilling book For Your Own Good. And gradually over time, and through my own deep personal and also professional work, more and more has become clear. Now, many decades later, I can understand so many of the roots of the pervasive violence that we witness in our world. Being a passionate seeker of truth, understanding, compassion, healing, peace, and love, I am also continually learning more. And today I can increasingly recognize the many faces and forms of violence.

My growing consciousness has empowered me to also come to see the justifications, the enabling, the complicity, the belief systems which perpetuate violence within both myself and others. This has been a deeply humbling and often disturbing process of peeling back the fog I've been immersed in and no longer, as best as I possibly can, participate in acts of violence, whether subtle or overt, implicit or explicit.

Early in my journey of sobriety and awakening, it was reflected to me that one vital piece of our healing is that of engaging in recognizing and lowering our tolerance for violence. To the degree that we see violence for what it is rather than remain blind to it — and, critically, understand its roots in trauma — is the degree that we can become forces of compassion, wisdom, and peace within ourselves and all that we touch.

* * * * *

"When we hold on to our opinions with aggression, no matter how valid our cause, we are simply adding more aggression to the planet, and violence and pain increase. Cultivating nonaggression is cultivating peace."

— Pema Chödrön

For some time now I've been witnessing the violence of dehumanization and its connection with trauma. I see human beings condemning all Palestinians and all Muslims, all Israelis and Jews, all immigrants and refugees, all Blacks and other people of color, all trans and gays, all republicans or all democrats, and anything taught in schools that threatens the caste system, our ignorance and judgments and prejudices, and the patriarchal savage capitalist system that is destroying our country, other nations, and the planet. And the list goes on and on...

As soon as we have dehumanized anyone for any reason, we have become mirrors for that which we distain and that which hurts and injures our own hearts. This split can only endure by defending ourselves against the wisdom of our hearts and souls, a wisdom which tells us that we are all connected, all related, all family, and all matter. 

And yet, to cause injury, or to return injury with more injury, is something that we are witness to each and every day. Human beings are judged, shamed, blamed, dehumanized for:

• their religion
• their race
• their ethnicity
• their gender
• their sexual orientation
• their politics
• their addictions
• their mental illness
• disability
• their poverty
• all the many layers of trauma that are internalized or projected outward

And, again, the list goes on. It is exactly this epidemic level of dehumanization that causes an endless stream of violence directed at ourselves and at others. This split from deeper understanding, compassion, and consciousness of our interrelatedness causes profound suffering.

And it is exactly this split from the wisdom of our hearts that can be recognized, healed, and transformed. First, there is a great need for us to stop giving ourselves or others a pass at hurling harm onto others.

* * * * *

"The more we love, the more real we become."

— Stephen Levine

It is not easy at all to catch ourselves and intervene when we are so tempted to return judgment with judgment, hatred with hatred, bitterness and rage with more bitterness and rage, dehumanization with more dehumanization and othering, violence with ever more growing violence. This is where an understanding of trauma can be so transformative. It can break open the rigid walls that we have built around the wisdom of our hearts.

Our collective struggles and suffering are also very much connected with our individual suffering and the relationship that we have cultivated with our own hearts. A personal story is relevant and illuminates how it is that love is the most powerful medicine. Often, however, the process of opening our hearts to love asks a lot of us — a lot of courage and commitment, compassion and support, tenacity and perseverance, humility and vulnerability, and strength of heart and soul.

My personal story is related to my mother and my family of origin... and all of our ancestors and the cultures and belief systems we were born into over the course of countless generations. 

When I first got sober and began this journey of waking up from delusion, separation, fear and shame, and the trauma that underlies all of it, I began to see what I could not see when it happened. I was unearthing the terror and brutality of my own mother. As I grew to have enough support to know what I know, see what I see, and feel what I feel, it became clear how it was that my mother had played a huge role in my twin brother's suicide and my father's early death at age 60. Added onto all of those losses was the hatred and violence she had directed towards me that would surface unpredictably and over the whole of my young lifetime. The difference now was also not only that I was seeing the scope of violence and brutality, I was feeling it. And I thought that I could never, ever forgive my mother. Never.

Someday there will be a book that I will write about this journey of undefending my heart, but for now I will simply share that I engaged in years and decades of healing, opening, and expanding my broken heart. And as I gradually deepened in my heartfelt understanding of the trauma I had endured but survived, an inevitable part of this profound journey was my growing consciousness of the trauma my mother had also endured and survived. And there came a time when I wept, when I grieved and still grieve what my mom had experienced beginning as a tiny vulnerable child.

With this understanding, bitterness and rage gradually came to be replaced with compassion, forgiveness, and love. I got it in my bones how it is that people who commit monstrous acts do not fall from the sky. First, monstrous things had to have happened to them. And it is exactly this conscious awareness that freed me, and that can free us all, from repeating the endless cycles of dehumanization, suffering, and violence.

And sometimes the miracle of our own awakening ripples outward and even the impossible can become possible. Which is what happened with my mother who at age 87 began to experience her own partial awakening. This was never supposed to happen. But it did. My mom had been locked into a narcissistic illness so deep and paralyzing that every therapist I'd had reflected that she was incapable of compassion and love. I had been told to grieve my mother like a death. What I hadn't realized was that under it all was the beauty of her true nature. Even under the brutality and heartlessness as pervasive as someone like Trump, within my mother remained this hidden out of reach sacred core of who she truly was.

Until she turned 87, had a breakdown and was hospitalized, and ultimately moved to live minutes from myself and her family here in the Pacific Northwest. Then, as her narcissistic shield was shattering and bled away, what remained was all the self-loathing that she had long projected onto others. And Mom just wanted to die. And she would tell me, "I'm just trouble." And I'd respond, "No, Mom, you are not trouble. You are my treasure." And a smile would sweep across her face. And we would squeeze each other's hands and gaze into each other's eyes. With love.

And my mom spent the last seven years of her life receiving and giving love. Truly, the more we love, the more real we become.

* * * * *

"Our greatest strength lies in

the gentleness and tenderness

of our heart."

— Rumi

It is truly a hero's journey to practice peace in world engulfed in dehumanization and brutality. And yet, it is exactly this commitment to nonviolence, to peace, to kindness which is so obviously an imperative to the well-being of us all...

Today I Am Taking the Side of Peace

Today I am taking sides.

I am taking the side of Peace.

Peace, which I will not abandon

even when its voice is drowned out

by hurt and hatred,

bitterness of loss,

cries of right and wrong.

I am taking the side of Peace

whose name has barely been spoken

in this winnerless war.

I will hold Peace in my arms,

and share my body’s breath,

lest Peace be added

to the body count.

I will call for de-escalation

even when I want nothing more

than to get even.

I will do it

in the service of Peace.

I will make a clearing

in the overgrown

thicket of cause and effect

so Peace can breathe

for a minute

and reach for the sky.

I will do what I must

to save the life of Peace.

I will breathe through tears.

I will swallow pride.

I will bite my tongue.

I will offer love

without testing for deservingness.

So don’t ask me to wave a flag today

unless it is the flag of Peace.

Don’t ask me to sing an anthem

unless it is a song of Peace.

Don’t ask me to take sides

unless it is the side of Peace.

— Rabbi Irwin Keller, Oct. 17, 2023

***

A Dedication to Kindness

A dedication to kindness offers us a chance to try to make a real difference despite the obstacles and unhappiness we might face. No matter what our belief systems, actions, or status, we are joined together in this world through the strands of relationship and interconnection. That suffering child, orphaned through a tsunami, who we see in Indonesia or Sri Lanka is part of our lives, as we must not forget that. There is nothing that just happens only "there" anymore - not a war, not an exploitation of the weak, not a disease, not a hope for change. We need to stop reinforcing the sense of dehumanization, of "us" and "them," of separation that leads to wanton cruelty in the first place.

And if tomorrow is going to look any better than today, we must realize that the currency for compassion isn't what someone does, right or wrong - it is the very fact that that person exists. Commitment to the possibility of kindness cannot be discarded as foolish or irrelevant, even in troubling times when we often can't find easy answers. If we abandon the force of kindness as we confront cruelty, we won't learn anything to take into tomorrow - not from history, not from one another, not from life.

Even if we are encountering cruelty, we must try to understand its roots and determine not to be the same as those acting it out. We must determine not to simply keep perpetrating the forces of separation and disregard. If we don't make the effort, what will we really have accomplished?...

We can all keep on trying, through the extension of lovingkindness to others, and make the effort to pay attention to them in an inclusive way rather than splitting them off into the "other" - the "different" ones who can be hurt with impunity. This doesn't at all mean that we will like everybody or acquiesce to everyitng that he or she does. It doesn't mean that we become complacent or passive about naming wrongdoing as wrong or about seeking change, sometimes very forcefully, with our whole heart.

Practicing lovingkindness does mean that we learn to see the lives of others, really see them, as related to our own lives. It means that we open up to the possibility of caring for others not just because we like them or admire them or are indebted to them in some way, but because our lives are inextricably linked to one another's. We use the practice of lovingkindness meditation as a way to recover our innermost knowledge of that linkage as we dissolve the barriers we have been upholding and genuinely awaken to how connected we all are.

― Sharon Salzberg

*****

"War and peace start in the human heart ― and whether that heart is open or whether that heart closes has global implications."

— Pema Chödrön

These times, I believe, ask of us to journey deeply and courageously into a more expansive experience of what it is to be human. This requires of us to undefend our hearts. And as we increasingly open and befriend our own hearts, the experience of our interrelatedness with all humans and with all beings grows. And out of this wisdom, we are increasingly empowered to understand and trace the threads of trauma back through generations and cultures, our own and that of others. 

This consciousness of the roots of violence in ancestral and cultural trauma gifts us with the capacity to break free from the cycles of violence which we were previously unaware of and often unknowingly complicit with. 

As our circles of caring grow, as we are able to see all that is sacred through the eyes of our hearts and souls, we are able more and more to extricate ourselves from systems of harm, dehumanization, violence, and suffering. We are able to increasingly be the peace, the love, the kindness that our beautiful hurting world hungers for.

At least this has certainly been my experience. May our individual and collective stories of healing, peace, kindness, and love grow and grow. This is my deep prayer. 🙏

Bless us all, no exceptions...

💗

Molly