When a human being experiences trauma and has no way to safely handle the stress of it, the trauma bounces around inside them. It causes damage like a bullet that ricochets around with no exit, tearing flesh and wounding with every movement.
Sometimes those who experience this exercise the trauma in an uncontainable explosion of violence. Often these explosions cause trauma in other people. And so the chain of violence and hurt continues on and on. We are nothing if not elaborate copy cats.
We demand justice when we are hurt and we demand silence when we are the one doing the hurting.
I think this hurt is a magnified version of gossip. The best way to stop gossip is to quit engaging in it. I tell my employees, you have to be the place the gossip goes to die. You have to quit sharing it, reveling in it and perpetuating it.
We have to train ourselves and each other to be the place that trauma goes to die. We can only do that by doing the opposite. We have to be the one sitting with someone who hurts. Offering them kindness and support and love even when we don’t understand why they are acting different than we do. We have to quit judging every single thing that is different and offer acceptance and kindness. We have to do it every single day. Every single moment.
Until we decide to do that, one by one, at home, at work, in the ballot box, nothing changes. Nothing changes.
she-nan-igans 