Collective trauma
The year 2022 started off as, well, to quote my cats, just another day. I have never been a believer of New Year Resolutions and this year has failed to convert me once again. Over the holidays, however, I was afforded the quietude and solitude to tease apart the disentangled mess in my head to seek clarity.
As I was saying to a departing friend, Lucy, yesterday, I’m quite done with overextending myself without being reciprocated for my effort, and I’m quite honestly fed up with the lack of recognition or appreciation. I don’t mean having the red carpet rolled out for me; I mean heartfelt appreciation and the time reserved to evaluate and extend the value of my work, to which I pour in hours of research and writing.
The first week back at work has no agenda. It’s worth mentioning that majority of my life has been lived without an agenda. In my search for good social impact-related podcasts to build the foundation for the podcast I am imagining for my organisation, I stumbled upon the one by Lift Economy today. Specifically, the episode featuring leadership coach Spencer Honeyman, who has trained with spiritual teacher Thomas Hübl before launching the Enliven Academy for purpose-driven entrepreneurs and leaders. As part of the training provided at Enliven, Spencer Honeyman would take his students outdoors to experience the sense of awe, which is backed by a host of empirical scientific studies to have positive psychological and physiological effects.
But the real light bulb that went up in my head is the work surrounding collective trauma. On the sofa last night, my husband and I exchanged our own experiences of the current state of our home city - him struggling with suppressing the compulsive urge to box someone from ‘the other camp’, me choosing numb until I can do something about it. Seeing the tears welling up in his eyes, I suggested something that would hopefully be helpful to him and me - what if we document and record our memories of this city at a time when historical documentation by independent media outlets is disappearing at a staggering speed as one after another bites the dust? What if we then convene people at a later stage, in a safe environment, to aggregate and collate our collective memories that could make up for the void? What if we make it our final line of defence by refusing to let this particular period of the city evaporate without a trace, simultaneously being overwritten by propaganda?
What would our collective trauma look like, if we are given free reign to utilise our creativity through words, photography, videography, painting, theatre, music, dance, sculpting, and whatever we could lay our hands on?