Part 1 was posted on December 18. You can read it here.
But what was the straw that broke the camel’s back in my case? What hurled me into that dark abyss I described earlier? The paranoia, the anxiety, the nightmares and sleeplessness. Not opening my closet in three years or not caring about much of anything. The fear of being alone in a place or in a crowd of strangers. Fear of going to unfamiliar places. Of driving myself across town. Did it start with the collective trauma and abuse mentioned earlier? I can’t be sure, but therapy definitely points to my attack by an inebriated young woman wielding a stun gun. She looked to be college age. One would never have guessed her capable of such a senseless assault. I told few people about it but it was years before I realized how that event stifled my voice. Yet “they” – the authorities in society – say if we don’t talk about assault right away it must not be true. Or we’ve waited too long to talk. They want us to talk on their timetable about damage done to us when there might not be visible wounds or we even understand the psychological scars that might not have surfaced yet. It was a few years after the attack that I finally sought the help of a therapist and was diagnosed with the PTSD or post traumatic stress disorder that changed my life.
Continue reading “We Endure Abuse to Survive, Part 2 by Karen Tate”
When I moved to Maine from New Orleans 15 years ago, I was delighted to discover how many birch trees were on the property where I lived with my new partner. Previously I had had little contact with these beautiful white trees, other than in pictures and stories. The name always evoked images of birch bark canoes and messages to fate scrawled with bits of burnt wood.
In a recent interview about my current published paper and my life’s-work, Sawbonna, which is a model of both social and restorative justice, I was struck by how being locked down due to this global pandemic not only rips us to the core of our fears and forebodings; but, as well, invites us, if challenges us, to witness with and for each other, as we come to see the depth of resilience that has been a kindred companion throughout the ages. From time immemorial, Gaia delights by firing our hearts of justice with creativity. With love.
By now, all aspects of life have been altered or halted. The world as we know it has become radically different as we attempt to get a handle on this disease and stop the rising number of deaths each day. We are enduring trauma on a global and individual level. Trauma carries a myriad of emotions; anger and grief sometimes being the prominent two. And with the rising uncertainty paired with the increasing amount of trauma and grief we are all experiencing, we need to find ways to talk about our feelings, share, and move forward.
My head is a little bit too full lately. My classes begin in two weeks and I am determined to create an “Intro to Christian Ethics” class that offers my students at least an idea about hope that resonates with them, if not with me. Trauma is both a daily reality for far too many of us, and the headline or undercurrent of nearly every news report. Images from popular media play against my desires, my training in feminist analysis and ideas about power and empowerment in endless abundance. And I am mothering a joyful three-and-a-half-year-old whose need for liveliness both challenges and taxes me, pushing me and putting me face to face with my own hopes and doubts.
“Be gentle with yourself.”
The past few weeks, I’ve been sitting with the many layers held by the concept, and the manifest reality, of mother, mothering, and motherhood. Mother is seen in the divine feminine, in the cosmos, and in the sea and the glow of the moon. She is held in our genes and our histories and the eyes of our children. She is found in archetypes of healing, nurturing, and comfort, as well as in stories of criticism, coldness, and abuse. She is the soft one who tends grief and holds hands and braids hair, and she is the unbreakable one whose labor and caregiving is taken for granted in most areas of her life. We carry our mothers with us in our DNA, in our stories, and in the way we navigate the impacts of intergenerational trauma.
In light of the recent attacks on Jewish cemeteries —the desecration of 
In March of 2011, at a symposium on trauma, healing, and spirituality in Belfast, Ireland, I spoke about shame in the context of war, addressing the experiences of women survivors of rape during the Rwandan genocide, US soldiers returning from war with PTSD symptoms, and cultures, such as those in Belfast and Bosnia, steeped in war and violence. While discussing how theology has a responsibility to examine how the church talks about shame, guilt, and sin to help survivors of war trauma heal, I recognized A. Denise Starkey in the audience, a woman whose work was instrumental in the crafting of my own. Her book, 
feminismandreligion.com 