Home is where trauma-informed, justice-directed truth-tellers are
And other thoughts on belonging
I found home among feminists, anti-racists, queer and lgbt folks, activists, therapists, frontline workers at women’s and homeless shelters, and artists whose works had something to say. I found home among people who understood trauma, made space for pain, and allowed and accepted brokenness as a default state of living in this fucked up, upside-down, magical, wondrous time we are all living through.
I found home when reading Judith Herman’s work on trauma and recovery. In the healing spaces and arms of Black and Indigenous women and women of color. One thing I knew for sure, though, and that was that home was not where my biological family was, which is where everyone was saying it should be.
Home, for me, is where people understand that trauma work is justice work and that the two are inextricable.
Where there is trauma, there is injustice. Period, full stop. Obviously, this does not include accidents like something falling and hitting you on the head. I’m talking about trauma related to individual or systemic abuse of power.
And individual abuse of power doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There is something that leads to it, sustains it, and supports it: systems. Structures created by people, on purpose. Grand constructions and epistles that say This group gets to make the rules for everyone, everyone must abide by said rules, and no one else can join this group.
I found home in the language of healing, of justice, of resistance. Of challenging what we’ve been taught not to question. Of imagining new ways, new realities, and reshaping broken into beautiful.
These spaces helped me find my voice, gave me permission to accept what I was told was unacceptable about myself and others. Showed me how to challenge the parts of the poison I’d ingested and thought were my own beliefs. It has been a path of shattering, excision, and stretching to accommodate cracks and fissures.
But the absolute, undeniable sense of belonging for me comes from being with people who understand, whether intuitively-but-without-the-words, or expertly-and-with-a-bullhorn, that trauma is not some rare and random thing – it is the very foundation upon which our current global economy exists.
You cannot talk about trauma without talking about justice. Equity, diversity, inclusion is about trauma. Anti-racism is about trauma. Challenging homophobia and transphobia is about challenging systems of power that create trauma.
Sharing stories about trauma, whether they are stories of healing from trauma, or ways to cope with trauma…is an incredibly vulnerable and courageous act.
Breaking silence around experiences we are meant to suffer silently is an act of resilience, defiance, and courage because when one person shares their story, a dozen more are emboldened to speak, and the ripple effect gathers momentum until we begin to see that it happens far more than anyone thought and to people across segments of society, and that maybe it’s not a few isolated incidents. Maybe it’s an entire fucked up system in need of a serious overhaul.
I am tired of pretending I have everything under control. I so do not. None of this is controllable. All you can do is witness, navigate, and then share what you see, feel, hear, need, want, know. That’s your only job. You are the only one of you in existence. Ever. There has never been and never will be another like you.
Your job is to sing that tune only you can sing, in the way only you can sing it.
Silencing is a powerful method of halting truth in its tracks. Jordan Neely was revealing his trauma in that subway car. He was hungry, fed up, tired of staying silent, of pretending and dancing when everything was so SO wrong. Steel and concrete swallowing all that’s green and alive, lies cloaked as gospel, hunger in the land of billionaires, more guns to stop shootings…all of it, wrong. His trauma erupted before quiet bystanders and one final silencer. One defender of the status quo, whom the system protected in return.
The conversations on media platforms are important to pay attention to. What is being supported? The reigning monarchy or those who’ve challenged it? The former president perpetrator of sexual assault or the victim who won the lawsuit? How is it being framed, who is the hero, what is the message, where is the power, who is the architect of the conversation?
I started out talking about home because that is a real exploration for me these days. More and more, I hear surprising, sometimes shocking things come out of the mouths of folks I thought “got it”, but clearly don’t. They side with power or blame victims (same thing, I guess), and I find myself dismayed. So I’ve been wondering where do I belong, and to whom? Who are my people, my community? I’m not sure I know what the concept of home means, anymore. Is home in my body? My soul? If it’s the latter, where do I find it?
The only home I’ve ever known for sure has been among the trauma-informed, justice-directed, truth-tellers and whistle-blowers of the world. Those of us limping along, holding each other up, and pointing all along the way at the resplendent beauty around us.
I’ve always felt like an outsider, starting with my family of origin. Home seems like something far off in a distant fairy tale I might’ve lived once. Belonging seems like a constructed myth that stings when I think about it. Shouldn’t we belong simply because we exist? We were birthed from the cosmic mother through the earth mother, made of the stars and the soil…how could we not belong?
We walk on the worm-metabolized bones of our ancestors, we eat vegetables nurtured in those same minerals, we eat fish from the seas that soak ashes of loved ones, we breathe air exhaled from billions of organisms on this spinning rock.
And truth is the heartbeat at the center of it all. Trauma is when we are torn away from that truth, and justice is the thundering urge to reinstate equilibrium. That is what we all belong to. And it’s in the words and actions of those who embody this that I find home.
What feels like home for you? Is there a particular place on this gorgeous blue and green dot suspended in nothingness (though we all know it’s not really nothingness, don’t we)? How do you define ‘home’ and how do you know when you’ve found it? How do you walk yourself back home when you’ve strayed away?
Wishing you all lots of softness this week, cuz I know I sure as hell could use some.
More soon.