harm reduction amidst a global trauma.

banner is @rayoandhoney on instagram

disclaimer: this piece is about harm reduction amidst a global trauma and is written from the perspective of a white queer american woman with plenty privilege being gaslit daily by all facets of her government and culture. it represents my opinions only. i am sure there are things i didn’t think of. i gratefully welcome thoughts & feedback.

i want to start by acknowledging my fellow C-PTSD comrades. i know how disorienting it is to be thrown back into a 24/7 whole body & mind trauma. still, i only know what it’s like to go through this in my stage of recovery (so, so blessed and privileged to have had access to years of therapy w/ st. hellen and to be married to the world’s most grounding woman) and i can say from this position of privilege that this shit is hard af. i love you. i love us. i am so proud of the ways we’ve found to survive. below are things you already know. i hope they’re a helpful affirmation anyway.

we are living through a collective, ongoing trauma. before you accuse me of exaggerating (James Baldwin said you would), here’s an excerpt from the foundational text, Trauma & Recovery (92) by Judith Herman, a book that changed my life:

“Psychological trauma is an affiliation of the powerless. At the moment of trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force. When the force is that of nature, we speak of disasters. When the force is that of other human beings, we speak of atrocities. Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people a sense of control, connection, and meaning.”

do you have consistent sense of control, connection, and meaning right now? do you feel cared for?

if this pandemic is the first time you’ve suffered a trauma or the first time you’ve sustained an extended traumatic event, then i’m truly sorry. this reminds me of a moment in grey’s anatomy (brought to us by the phenomenal Shonda Rhimes, written by a brilliant team of writers, and executed by the genius Sandra Oh — there will be no grey’s hate here) where christina (Sandra Fucking Oh) and george (T.R. Knight) have this exchange (cw: parent death):

CRISTINA: “There’s a club. The Dead Dads Club. And you can’t be in it until you’re in it. You can try to understand, you can sympathize. But until you feel that loss… My dad died when I was nine. George, I’m really sorry you had to join the club.”

GEORGE: “I… I don’t know how to exist in a world where my dad doesn’t.”

CRISTINA: “Yeah, that never really changes.”

i’m really sorry you had to join the club. i say that as someone who has spent over a decade trying to figure out how not to resent people who didn’t spend a significant amount of their energy worrying and trying to survive for years at a time. i have a hard time understanding how some people have never worried about their survival at all. still, i would never have wished this upon you. i dreamed a dream of there being fewer of us in this club as time went on, not more. you’re in the club now, though, and no matter how afraid, in denial, angry, etc. you are, it’s still true that you are different now than you were before.

i desperately want to pour out every fact, framework, and learned behavior i have about trauma so that i can arm you with everything i can think of that could contribute to your survival. i want you to have it all, but i know that you can’t integrate it fast enough for it to be useful. you’re already overwhelmed. you’re so goddamn tired all the goddamn time (plus my right hand has developed a cramp and a tremor), so i will try to give you a cheat sheet (shout out to the high school homies) and some advice that may not land now but will be waiting for you when you’re ready (shout out to porscha and stevie). so here goes:

1.you may still believe that things aren’t so bad and you’re doing okay. believe that if you need to in order to survive, but know that they’re not and you’re not. everyone in this club knows that you can believe something that isn’t true to make it through the day (and the next day, and the next day). you may feel “cr*zy” because of how you oscillate through feelings during the week, the day, the hour, the minute. you are not cr*zy. cr*zy is an ableist, capitalist, patriarchal word used to dismiss your very real concerns and experience so that you can keep filling your role and benefiting others. the fact that others are projecting a different energy / appearance / message than you are does not change the reality of your reality. none of this is normal. none of this is okay.

2. like George / T. R. Knight, you don’t know how to live in this new world. you will likely be tempted to just adapt and do things exactly how you had planned before the entire world changed. hopefully reading it phrased like that will make it obvious that this will not work. our brains insulate us from this, so reread it if you need to. or maybe you feel like you can’t do… anything. maybe it’s both. now is the time to reprioritize. i once worked somewhere where they said “if everything is important, nothing is important.” what can you not live without? your body knows this wisdom:

“When faced with a life-threatening injury, the body redirects blood to try to save the brain and heart. This may rob the intestines and lungs of oxygen and other vital substances. Doctors can give the patient blood and other fluids to prevent damage to other organs.” (source)

put your resources toward making sure you and your closest community have a roof, water, nutrients, as much sleep as you can manage, some sense of grounding, and some connection to your community. everything else is lagniappe (i live in new orleans but here’s a source.) this means a lot of things that used to be important, aren’t anymore. good. welcome. if you’re wondering how you used to do all of this at once, you’re in the right place. do what you can and watch how well you can survive without the extra. examine what and who gives you energy. accept that your life & network will look different after this. accept that you may need more time, more space, and a higher dose of an SSRI to survive this time because this time is not the same as before. that’s okay. we all are finding ways to cope.

i wish it didn’t need to be said, but children are humans too. this applies to them. their nervous systems are sponges. there is no hiding things from them. long before you believe they know, they know. be honest with them. hear their feelings. hold them. ask them what they need. they’re better at this than we are.

3. when you survive this or feel like you are adequately surviving it, you can go one of two ways with your newfound understanding of trauma. you can:

a) transform your trauma into a merit badge that other people need to earn exactly how you did. you can compare everyone else’s experience to your own and seek lack. you can accept pain as unavoidable because you endured it.

b) decide to never forget how hard life can be and how hard we struggle to continue anyway. you can assume the best about those around you. sure they might get over sometimes, might give in to their lesser angels, might do different than they would at their best, but don’t you?

give in to b). give in to solidarity. to community.

we have all lived six months of something that has changed the way we think about our lives. the things we are able to do. the things we have lived with and without.

you deserve to grieve. to process. to feel. to think. to dream.

before you rebuild.

because we will rebuild. it’s my hope that we will do so with a renewed humility and empathy. that we will move forward with an understanding that we are all at the will of a magnificent and volatile planet and the greed of an unbelievably small group of unremarkable men.

let’s do differently.

r.i.p. to Walter Harris Jr., Coach Reese, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Jacob Blake, Trayford Pellerin, Modesto Reyes, Daviri Robertson, Chris Joseph and the five amazing young adults i had the great joy of educating who we lost this summer.