Greetings Dear Community,

I’m sure you can feel it. The tightening. The bracing. We are sensing into what will undoubtedly be a difficult time as Derek Chauvin’s trial begins. As we prepare, I’d like to invite us to consider the reasons for the enormity of this tension.

Trauma replays itself until we have come to a sense of resolution. This neurobiological impulse is designed to help protect us from danger. What are we collectively replaying?

Some of you reading this lived through the harrowing years of the Civil Rights Movement. You can likely recall gathering around a television as news came in about the barbarous murder of a child in Mississippi and the trial that acquitted his murderers. Perhaps you remember seeing footage of a bus burning on Mother’s Day, or the rubble left after a church bombing in Birmingham on a Sunday morning. You likely remember exactly where you were when news broke about the assassination of three beloved American leaders within five short years as President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. were gunned down.

This was terrorism. It was designed to instill panic and fear. It represented a deadly, concentrated period that has left an indelible mark on the American psyche. It reinforced the callousness and brutality of racial segregation for black people and reminded whites who may have been inclined to support the effort toward equality that if they threw their lot in with African Americans, they would not be spared. An example would be made.

The terrorism that younger generations have experienced—are experiencing—is more diffuse. Our leaders are not dying, but a crushing number of civilians have. Elders shot during Bible study, children gunned down while playing in parks or taking out the trash for their mothers, boys never making it back to their parents as they walked home at night, men ensnared by police for allegedly small infractions—selling loose cigarettes, driving with a headlight out, or using a counterfeit $20.00 bill. A young man out for a jog. A woman sleeping in her own bed.

This is terrorism, too.

All of this has injured our hearts and spirits—we have lived through these brutalizing moments. While many black people and people of color experience crippling and acute reactions to these incidents, white people likely experience symptoms of trauma, too. Like being inside a house with an abuser and witnessing violence, white people may experience incapacitating feelings of guilt, helplessness, even apathy. White people who subscribe to racist ideology and justify violence experience the degradation of their humanity and while they may not realize it, their hate poisons them, too.

It helps me to remember that we are survivors. Exposure to traumatic events can have compounding effects over the course of a lifespan. When we acknowledge that, it makes sense that we experience recurrent flashes of our trauma at moments like these. It makes sense that the pending trial is burdened with the weight of justice so long delayed.

Beyond being racially motivated, these tragic events also share another common thread: they have all been documented in photograph or film and played repeatedly by the media. It used to be that one had to pick up a newspaper or tune into a radio or television broadcast to get the news. Today, with smart phones, media has infiltrated every waking moment of our lives with a deluge of information. Symptoms typically associated with direct trauma exposure can arise for those consuming these kinds of media. Each exposure activates our stress response systems. There is little reprieve.

So when we talk about bracing ourselves as we prepare for Derek Chauvin’s trial, it’s not just the pain of what happened on May 25th to George Floyd that is coming up. It is not just one man on trial, but the violence of a brutalizing system that stretches back centuries to the atrocity of slavery and to the theft of millions of human beings from their ancestral homelands. Violence that birthed this nation.

This is what we mean when we talk about collective trauma.

But this is also what can unite us in collective purpose. None of us can save everyone, but with devotion, each of us can try to encourage someone along their path.

We can break the cycle of violence in this country. Through meaningful rituals that allow us to grieve and heal. Through witnessing the enactment of justice and accountability for harm. Through changing our policies and rehabituating our practices, we can rehabilitate ourselves and our nation.

As we’re working on healing the collective, let’s also commit to doing internal work to build our own capacity, resiliency, and compassion. There’s something powerfully unsettling about the phrase “hurt people hurt people.” Unless we take up the work of healing, we’re not just endangering ourselves, we could be endangering others as well.

We can’t control what will happen with this trial. We are bracing because even with video evidence, we’re not certain that justice will prevail. Regardless of the outcome it will be a painful, enraging experience as we collectively revisit George Floyd’s murder. Even while it would be incredibly symbolic, convicting one man would not solve the issues that made George Floyd vulnerable to so many disparities in our state. We have a lot of work to do.

So as we feel our bodies tensing up, perhaps the best thing we can do right now is take a deep breath—cherish our ability to do so—and roll up our sleeves to start the work of building community again, one precious human being at a time.

With abiding love,

Sarah