Beyond the March: Healing an Adolescent Nation

Beyond the March: Healing an Adolescent Nation

by | Oct 18, 2019 | Antiracism, Racism, Trauma Transformation, Uncategorized

 

 We have work to do. The election of Trump has ripped the bandaid off our modern myths of justice, revealing the collective wounds we swept there after the Civil Rights Movement.  While our society shifted to a more inclusive society in the 1960s, fifty years of good intentions does not erase 350 years of horrific deeds. 

Our wounds have been festering for centuries, cyclically reopened by violence. We are now being called to face our demons and to heal more fully, together. 

Persecuted white Europeans migrated here only to enslave others and transfer their victimhoods onto indigenous peoples and Black people. As Black people have rebelled at injustice, at each advancement white people have been reminded of their own ancestral wounds the pain of which increases with privilege lost.  Every person and every culture can transform this pain, can create a new pattern, but we haven’t yet.

In the Civil Rights Movement, we tried to create new patterns using nonviolent tactics aimed to replace fear with love. Northern white liberals used these methods only to transform the hateful hearts of Southern racists without redirecting our energies back onto ourselves, our communities, and local economies.

In the north, we barred Blacks from unions, allowed housing segregation and job discrimination to continue, and decided having Black people sit at lunch counters was change enough, turning a blind eye to the truth that many didn’t have money to enter the restaurant at all. We betrayed justice and fed ourselves tales of victory, focusing on the new handful of Black faces populating our neighborhoods, restaurants, and workplaces. We did nothing to support the majority of Black folks whose poverty, injustice, and incarceration rates were rising.  The non-violent movement in the south became the violent rioting movements of the north because when racial justice was needed economically, whites chose to turn back to our privilege and live complacently.

As whites, we must feel our wounds again now.  We must look into the mirror. White folk of all shades, now is our opportunity to atone, heal ourselves and our ancestral pain.

Civil Rights Protest, 1965

For us people of color, the original wound stems from slavery. The original wound was a loss of self, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. An overlooked piece of our journey to freedom is that slavery was only 1/3 physical. Most of us have not made it to freedom. Our bodies may have made it to the north, but our minds and spirits have yet to reach their destination.

The trauma of slavery has affected our ability to respond. We often take the blame for things that aren’t ours and blame others for things that aren’t theirs. Taking responsibility means, quite literally, the ability to respond.  We need to intentionally remember: our history, our strength, our journey, ourselves and our spirit because there has been an intentional dismemberment of those things in our communities. The plan was to keep the body strong and the mind and spirit weak.

The Civil Rights Movement brought lots of gifts including a wound of unkept promises. As African Americans in this country we don’t get to live our lives as individuals. We are seen as the collective “we” everywhere we go. This “we” is simultaneously bonding and supportive and binding and restraining. The illusion of the Civil Rights Movement was that we would finally live as individuals.

When Martin Luther King died, many of us abandoned love, choosing fear and anger instead. The pain of losing Martin was too much for us to bear. When they killed him, some of us started to believe that love didn’t always win and we wanted to win. So we put back on the cloak of fear and anger and started to fight again.

Each side has its share of the collective wound, two sides of the same coin. But now, as a nation, we face a choice.

Black Lives Matter protest, San Francisco

If we repeat the cycle of violence, our weapons are stronger than they were 60 years ago. It’d be easy to self-destruct this time. If we choose to heal, we can become united like never before.  Here are the ways we can heal, build a foundation for a new movement, and reach unity:

 

(1) Clean the Wound, Face the Truth

Let us remove the niceties, the fake stories of glory, the arrogance of superiority. Let us face the truth of our country’s history: We are not an exemplary democracy. We have nothing to preach about. We are hurting and we are still trying to understand how to create justice. It is time to feel the rage and anger that is trapped inside.

(2) Disinfect the Wound, Mourn

We need to grieve together. Grieve with people you trust so we can let go of the past and create room for a new future. Our new movement begins with the courage to mourn communally.

(3) Suture the Wound, Drop the Fear and Reach for Deeper Healing

We must move away from reacting. Step into responsibility instead of reaction, choose purposeful action and if we don’t know that is yet, wait until we do. In giving up fear, we can deepen our understandings and make choices from a place of truth, inspiration, and love.  We must give up rushing to action for action’s sake. Go inward first. Healing at the individual level is needed to heal at the system level. Let us aim for deeper healing.

(4) Tend to the Scar, Don’t forget, Instead Act from Deeper Wisdom

We must learn and remember our history. Every right earned had a backlash: slave-breeding followed the end of the slave trade, the Dred Scott case followed the underground railroad, lynching followed Black economic advancement, the assassination of leaders followed the Civil Right’s movement. This is the beginning of the backlash of Obama’s election. We too must do what generations preceding ours have done. We must organize, push, hold accountable, and stay united in the face of fear and national terrorism.

(5) After the Healing of Individual Wounds, Tend to Collective Scars

After bringing our attentions to our own wounds, we can tend to the scars of how we have related to each other. Let’s leave Facebook activism and choose diverse groups of people we can unite with face to face. Build your skills and engage in hard conversations.  Learn to lean on other brothers and sisters.

(6)  When All Scars are Healed, Build a New Movement

Once the wounds are healed we can build true unity. We may still hurt each other from time to time, but we will know how to transform this pain instead of transferring it. We will be stronger than ever, and we will put together the lessons of the past to build a new movement.

The dialogue of our election campaign revealed an adolescent nation at best. We are being asked to grow up. It’s a moment of initiation. And as is true with most initiations, there is a real chance we won’t make it. Complacency could cost us 150 years of social progress.  However, with a foundation of healed wounds, we can respond instead of reacting. Once we can do that, we will be undefeatable. There is a path forward. Blessings to us all on this journey.

Trauma is a Two-Way Street: Transform Scapegoating

Trauma is a Two-Way Street: Transform Scapegoating

by | Oct 18, 2019 | Facilitation, Participatory Leadership, Trauma Transformation, Uncategorized

When most people think about trauma, they think about how individuals experience physically or emotionally violent circumstances that leave them traumatized. Traumatic experiences are painful, but can be transformative, too. Personal healing is transformative when we release shame, blame, and guilt, and allow the traumatic experience to be integrated into the rest of our lives. The same goes for groups. When trauma occurs in groups, both the individual and the group can learn from it. Welcome to my new blog series: Trauma is a two-way street.

 

When a person experiences trauma it affects how they interact in all the groups they belong to. Conflict, dishonesty, and challenges among groups, I argue, are most often rooted in trauma, both individual and collective. In group dynamics too, trauma is not just an obstacle, it is an opportunity for transformation. The group can strengthen its bond and its commitment to its shared work when trauma is understood, transformed, and integrated into the group’s experience of itself.

 

Take scapegoating, for instance. People who have been emotionally, physically, or sexually abused as children, often develop a sense of isolation in their families. They feel that they’ve never been protected and safe. As a result, they learn to fend for themselves, and are often looking out for the next attacker or betrayer, developing a distrust in people, and especially groups. They can also become very independent and self-reliant, ready to speak their minds and be successful despite the lack of support. In group, this combination of factors often translates into being a truthteller without building supportive relationships. Groups often react negatively to people who do this, especially when that truth is being avoided.

So the group blames the individual for disrupting the group’s flow and the individual is scapegoated. If individual leaves, the group is likely to do the same to the next person. When the person leaves, they experience the same thing in the next group they join. When both sides avoid truths about themselves, the dynamic is repeated in a painful, disempowering way.

But scapegoating can become an opportunity to transform trauma, instead. Let’s see how.

I wrote Avoid Being Scapegoated: Look for Allies and Build Support a couple of years ago. In this blog, I’m focusing on how scapegoating affects groups and what both the individual being scapegoated and the group can do about the experience to transform the trauma.

What the person being scapegoated can do:

– Take ownership of your need to heal your own emotional wounds. Discover your first experiences being scapegoated (generally in the family), and do whatever you need (journal, release the emotions, create art, etc.) to heal them. If the emotions are very intense, you may want to support seek out support from a professional: energy-worker, acupuncturist, massage therapist, or a psycho-therapist. You may consider taking a break from the group while you do this.

  • – Say that you feel scapegoated: “I feel I’m being scapegoated for speaking my truth.”
  • – Shift the attention away from yourself: “Can the group honestly say I am the only person that feels this way? I am the only one that sees what is happening as problematic? I hear you say that your concern is that ____. I’m curious to know if others agree with you or there are other perspectives as well.””
  • – Build Allies and support. Before attending other meetings, ask people you trust about their thoughts and request their support: “Since you also think/feel about about this the way I do, the next time people gang up on me, could you please speak up?”
  • – Restate your commitment to the group, and move the conversation forward: “My commitment is to contribute to this group fulfilling its intention to_____. Can you see that my comment comes within this commitment? Can you hear it so we can learn and move beyond it instead of getting stuck in it? Can we take a step back, and think about what’s next?”

What the group/group facilitator can do:

  • – Identify the issue creating the scapegoating and ask the group to own how they contribute to it: “What does everyone else think/feel about this issue?”
  • – Make space to learn from the conversation: “I’m grateful this was brought to our attention. What does this discussion teach us about ourselves and our work?.”
  • – Support Transparency, create a space for people to share opinions privately (not everyone will speak out publicly): “ I’m happy this was brought to my attention. It’s always better to share reservations so we can handle them, instead of hiding them. Feel free to communicate privately with our leadership, too.”
  • – Integrate dissent into the meeting. Choose a check-in question that allows everyone to speak to how they participate in the dissent: “Complete the sentence. What frustrates me most about this process right now is….”
  • – Envision how the group can grow from the experience: “I’d like to see us grow from this conversation, what if we all became more ___ /built our capacity to ____ as a result of this conversation?”