Honoring the Survivors

My grandfather died last month, just a day before I set out to give my first series of talks on trauma.  It felt like an auspicious moment. 

My grandfather was a boy growing up in France during World War II.  Any time my mom would ask him what it was like to live through the war he would say, “Oh, it wasn’t so bad.  It was like a game to us.” He never talked about being scared or threatened or hungry. All of which are things we know everyone in France was feeling at that time.

So why did he describe it that way? 

He wasn’t dismissing World War II as a game.  That was his way of dealing with a very traumatic experience, both as a child and throughout the rest of his life. He had to think of it as a game because that was the only way he could make sense of an overwhelming experience..

We are living in a very exciting time where we are understanding more and more about what trauma is and how it impacts the minds, bodies, and realities.  We are, right now, developing language, tools, and resources that redefine trauma and how to work with it.  

My grandfather didn’t have access to any of this information or any of these tools. 

And he lived a good life, despite growing up in warzone. 

I believe he was deeply affected by this experience, but regardless of it’s impact I want to pay tribute to his coping skills.  And to the coping skills of anyone who has survived trauma and gone on to live a good life--even if at times it meant shutting parts of ourselves down because we didn’t know how to work with trauma directly.

Trauma colors a survivor’s perception of reality.  Even with the best intentions, when we can’t see beyond the trauma, it influences everything we do in the world, including our health and well-being.  

“After trauma the world is experienced with a different nervous system. The survivor’s energy now becomes focused on suppressing inner chaos, at the expense of spontaneous involvement in their lives. These attempts to maintain control over unbearable physiological reactions can result in a whole range of physical symptoms, including fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, and other autoimmune diseases. This explains why it is critical for trauma treatment to engage the entire organism, body, mind, and brain.”

― Bessel A. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma

So all the more gratitude and awe for people like my grandfather who survived traumatic events and went on to lead the healthiest, happiest lives they could.    

While holding my grandfather and all other survivors in the light, take a moment to imagine how much the world could change for the better if fewer people had to expend their energy managing trauma instead of being fully present in their lives.  What kind of impact might this have on the collective challenges we face today?    

With nothing but love and honor for all survivors and all the coping techniques we’ve used, my mission is to promote trauma-awareness and the methods of healing that are being made available to us.  I am able to carry out this mission because my grandfather and I are both survivors. And because I want everyone to experience the freedom and joy that healing has to offer us.