CHAPTER 1
Beginnings
My season in the sun has ended. The interesting thing about endings is that at some point, there must have been a beginning. Once begun, there can be gradual endings that gently occur over the passage of time; or there can be abrupt endings, as in kaput, bupkus, finiti, done. The camera shot fades to black and the movie is over. We are left to figure out the rest on our own. Whether gradual or abrupt, there are sometimes signs of forewarning, or at forewarnings worst, foreboding. With hindsight, people can go back and clearly identify a point that was the beginning of the end.
Even though there were perceptable signs of our societal beginning of the end, none of those events seemed like they would directly affect me personally. I observed believers and non believers on the topic of climate change. Each side spoke elequently about how climate change would or wouldn't influence our lives. There was also clear cut evidence that we were a nuclear world. Some of the world members played nice in the sandbox, and some did not. These are indeed large problems, yet I knew I was still OK. Even if one of these global events became our armegeddon, I personally felt I had all the resources I needed to not meet armegeddon kicking and screaming. If the asteroid hit, or the Earth returned to an ice age, or we were all obliterated by nukes, well for me that would just be that! I would merley show up. I would sit on the couch and read a good book, or perhaps I would stand at the edge of the shore waiting for the tidal wave to consume me and everything behind me. That type of sudden and cataclysmic end is completely unlike a world that seems to be slowly, but significantly, shifting into a state of darkness.
I was also becoming keenly aware of a different beginning of the end. The emotional and spiritual parts of the human climate were changing. As each year passed, people's spirits seemed to be getting more dim and dark. Once again though I still felt confident in my own emotional and spiritual stamina. I felt confident that I would navigate through these dark changes affected, but perhaps less affected than others. I point out the backdrop of the changing culture, because I think it is important to note that my immediate world did not go dark over time. My darkness was not a byproduct of the larger cultural darkness that was already brewing. There was no forewarning or foreboding. My sun fell suddenly. It fell as if there had been opaque theater curtains rolled up out of my sight, waiting for their cue to suddenly be released. When the cord was pulled, black velvet curtains cascaded down around me like a tube of dusty blackness across the stage of my world. As much as I tried to writhe away from the musty, choking blackness of the curtain, I could ultimately only admit there was no exit.
Certainly there had been those hints of a general societal darkness, before the stagehand unrolled my specific curtain. I am practical enough to know there will always be elements of darkness in an illuminated world. Before my specific curtain fell, my work in trauma had provided me with a keen awareness that we, as a culture, were experiencing a season of darkness. The season of darkness was creeping into the fabric of our day-to-day living. First the darkness happened to individuals. The individual darkness left unresolved, sprang from the individual to others. In the beginning it remained within a micro system; yet as each of the afflicted began to become complacent, and accept the darkness as the way it is, it began to go viral. Not only had clusters of affected people accepted it, they in turn often orchestrated intentional or unintentional flash mobs. Everyone they could reach would arrange to meet and learn to dance the same dance of trauma and darkness. The symptoms of trauma exposure began to spread like a high-load contagion. Symptoms jumped from person to person, person to community, community to community, and community to culture. By the time my curtain dropped, I had already begun to fear that this season of darkness was becoming the new culture of the world.
I worked in this world and had come to know it intimately. Yet within all my professional wanderings through darkness, I still believed I carried some sort of lantern that kept me safe. I would however be remiss to say that I was completely unaffected by this societal darkness.
Before my season of darkness, I believed things were fixable; and for the most part the world was a safe place. Without being naïve I remained hopeful that the things I saw as indicators of societal darkness could be ameliorated in some way. After all, I was a Social Worker, specifically a trauma therapist. Personally and professionally I possessed skills that allowed me to help people navigate through emotional perfect storms.
I continued to observe cultural changes in mindset and heartset. I intrinsically knew these changes, if allowed to continue over time, would result in the deterioration of many things I held sacred. Basic concepts like treating others the way you want to be treated and good overpowering evil, could potentially become obsolete. Things like hope, resiliency, decency, compassion, acceptance and empathy were beginning to feel watered down. I had even begun wondering if my own attempt to hold onto and advocate for those beliefs, was beginning to make me obsolete. It was frightening to think that my age of the dinosaur obsolescence would become more obvious, more public, than my stubborn insistance on holding onto the land line in our house, or the fact that my children were still required to hand write thank you cards. The message was becoming, "there are better, shorter, and simpler ways to do things." Problematically for me, some of those ways were to not do them at all. Clearly there were larger and smaller scale indicators of this impending darkness, yet they were indicators all the same.
Looking back, I began to more personally feel the intensity of the societal darkness, in early December of 2007. I remember saying to myself, "man that was an interesting week!" Perhaps for me, that week was the staging for the beginning of the end; it was the warning of, "Alas, the season she is a changing"!
Let me tell you about that week, because I can remember it vividly.
December 03 - December 07, 2007
Early in the week I did a full day presentation on the impact of trauma exposure on children. I speak nationally on this topic. I usually start slowing down my speaking schedule around the end of the year holidays. This past Tuesday was the last full day presentation of my speaking season.
I tend to try and put a lot of imagery into my presentations. The imagery helps the audience walk away with concrete images. Concrete images allow them to fully embrace the great and grave importance of this topic. My hope is if they can embrace that reality, then they might want to be an advocate or healer within the trauma community. "What will they be healing", you ask? They will be healing the darkness that lives in the souls of children who suffer effects of trauma exposure. Keep in mind, one day those very same children will become the adults and leaders of our world.
Perhaps because I had a particularly busy speaking schedule this season; or perhaps because the imagery I chose to use in this final workshop was so poignantly graphic; or because of other influences or factors going on in my life, I couldn't sleep the night after...
