Felon’s Alphabet: T is for Trauma
There are some words that automatically make people feel heavy. Trauma is one of them. For many, trauma brings to mind violence, addiction, war, betrayal, loss, and even incarceration.
But what if we choose to look at trauma differently? Not by pretending it never happened, or by denying the damage it causes, but by focusing on healing instead and claiming that trauma is not the end of your story. Trauma is just one chapter in your life story, and you can emerge healed, whole, and transformed.
“T” is for Trauma.
According to Webster’s Dictionary, trauma is “a very painful emotional experience, especially one that has a lasting emotional effect.”
Trauma comes from the Greek word meaning “wound.” But, what do all wounds have in common? Eventually they all heal. Many incarcerated people were intimately familiar with trauma long before they came to prison and became retraumatized. If incarcerated people have nothing else in common, they have trauma in common. Because in prison, just as in the real world, trauma doesn’t discriminate. It doesn’t care what color you are, what neighborhood you are from, or even how much money you have. Trauma is an equal opportunity affliction. And it finds you no matter where you are.
So often when we see someone acting out or behaving unreasonably, we say, “What’s wrong with you?” There has been a shift in thought, and today a more empathetic way of approaching the situation is to ask instead, “What’s happened to you?” That shift in thought changes everything. Because when we understand trauma, we stop seeing others and ourselves only as the mistakes we have made. We begin to really appreciate and understand the experiences that shaped our thinking and thus our choices.
Of course, this appreciation and understanding doesn’t erase accountability. We are still fully responsible for all of our actions.
Trauma can inform our present but it doesn’t have to predict our future too. We can decide that the pain we have experienced doesn’t have to become pain we pass on. Just as generational wealth is accumulated one generation at a time, so too can generational trauma decimate entire blood lines. Generational healing can begin today with you. You can be the reason generations of your family can find and experience healing.
Your healing can begin subtly. It doesn’t have to be a sudden dramatic shift. You can avail yourself of self-help groups like Trauma Talks, in-depth processing groups like Guiding Rage Into Power (GRIP) or even a victim impact group like Accountability Workshop and Victim Education (A.W.A.R.E.). It can be as simple as taking a deep breath before reacting, apologizing to someone in a timely fashion, or asking for help instead of pretending everything is OK.
Begin by thinking of your trauma as a backpack filled with cinderblocks that you carry around all the time. If each painful experience represents a cinderblock, then I know there are incarcerated individuals who have backpacks full of childhood abuse, gang violence, addiction, loss, rejection, and poverty.
And so, if you’ve wondered why life is harder for you than those around you who don’t have to carry the trauma backpack, now you know. Life will be harder carrying extra baggage. But don’t worry, when you heal, you get to divest yourself of your trauma burden, one cinderblock at a time.
Each trauma backpack is unique to its person, so the route each of us takes to unburden ourselves may be different. Some of us, like myself, may require talk therapy as an adjunct to pharmaceutical help. Others may find solace and healing in spirituality.
Healing doesn’t mean your past disappears. Healing means you don’t carry the weight of your trauma the same way anymore. The weight of your trauma is almost magically redistributed, through lessons learned, compassion yearned for found, and empathy for others and self rediscovered.
