Healing Together
"Come down to the river, the river of love", sang the speaker at the Women's Studies Brown Bag today. Her voice painted a beautiful picture of all people, down at the river to heal, together.
She spoke of acceptance and support. Mostly of love.
When I think of healing from some trauma, I think of letting go; not forgetting, but releasing. When someone has wronged you, wise people often say that you should forgive them, not necessarily forget what they did, but that holding a grudge is really keeping yourself from healing. By holding tight to your feeling that you were wronged, your pain, are you helping yourself?
When I imagine a place for all people to come and heal, it is tough!
People wrong and are wronged by one another, so how can all people come together and heal? How can people heal from some trauma while standing besides the one who did them wrong??
If you are hoping to sweep the past under the rug, this group healing cannot take place. You cannot heal from something while constantly reminded of that thing, unless you have come to terms with it.. Easier said than done.
But is there any other type of healing? Is it healing if you put that experience out of sight and out of mind, or bury it in your past and evade the person so that the whole thing almost never happened? Is that healing?
I think about this in the context of war veterans or victims of sexual assault: how could anyone possibly ask those people to come to terms with those experiences, relive those traumatic moments, or forgive the people involved?
It will not be easy. But healing is not always easy. Forgiveness is often not easy, and one might think that the perpetrator does not deserve forgiveness. But realize that forgiving others is a path to releasing yourself. They may not deserve forgiveness, but you deserve it!
Of course there are many schools of thought on how one should heal, and to prescribe one method for all trauma would be arrogant....I only ask how else a brighter future could come about unless someone decided to take the high road.
Communities (indigenous cultures, women, people of color, LGBTQ, etc) have been historically oppressed, marginalized, and mistreated, and that needs to be more broadly acknowledged. However, I think all of us should be careful with how we see the world moving forward: how we see justice being done, reparations paid, criminality and human rights violations punished?
The statement "they must pay for what they have done" comes to mind as sometimes warranted, but also extreme. And in such cases as institutional racism, or lack of gay acceptance, or sexual assault, it often seems like there is cumulatively SO MUCH that has wrongly taken place, that SOMEONE HAS TO PAY. But who? And how? And what is the goal?
My goal is to find that river, where we can ALL go to heal.
