Hearing the Traumatized Voice

Alongside Babylon’s streams,
    there we sat down,
    crying because we remembered Zion.

 We hung our lyres up
    in the trees there

     because that’s where our captors asked us to sing;
    our tormentors requested songs of joy:
    “Sing us a song about Zion!” they said.
But how could we possibly sing
    the Lord’s song on foreign soil? (Psalm 137:1-4, Common English Bible translation)

I was all set to join the protests. I was trying to figure out how to join the protests and still practice reasonable measures of coronavirus prevention, when I found myself in a situation where someone cocked a gun next to me.

And it was all over.

I forgot that I have gun trauma. Well, I didn’t forget in the sense that I didn’t remember the trauma. Being a school shooting survivor shapes all my days. I forgot in the sense that I didn’t remember how easily that trauma is literally triggered. While I did attempt to manage the situation with the gun in a way that allowed me to use the strategies I have practiced in therapy, it turns out the other people in that situation were not privy to those strategies, and things went off the rails rapidly. Suddenly I found myself retraumatized, fighting my way back to the light I had fought so hard to get to in the first place. I did manage to get to a safe space again, but at significant cost.

And so, I cannot protest. That incident made that reality plainly evident.

Well, again, I cannot go to protests outside where police are liable to begin shooting. Rubber bullets or not, it doesn’t matter. The impact will be the same on me. And I will also draw attention away from the cause. Very quickly I become a distraction to the purpose because my own reaction to such things is so physically disruptive. I cannot stand and hold the line against such attacks. I cannot be a tower of strength in those moments. I cannot even be a predictable presence there. I am as likely to go into catatonic shock as I am to begin screaming and shaking and behaving wildly. No, I cannot be out there.

So what did I do? I went silent.

In this world where everyone has a platform now, silence is practically impossible to notice. There was no shortage of voices raging against the machine on this one, and I am so grateful for all those who did start shouting. The protest uproar over the death of George Floyd and the significant acknowledgment of the white community that we can no longer sit silently by and watch our African American brothers and sisters suffer – we need this anger. We need this noise. We need the tide to shift.  We need to keep yelling and insisting until things have actually changed. And that will need to be a longer yell than just a couple of months. We are talking dismantling foundations here. That will not happen overnight.

But also, there are some who will be silent. And what frustrates me here is the judgment on those who are silent.

I am not worried about what people think about my silence. Perhaps it will be good for some to think that I am just one more checked out white woman who is too concerned with her own privilege to make a difference. If demonizing me advances the cause, then so be it. My story here is not nearly as important as the stories of others. I am, however, worried about the judgement that is being heaped on those who are the bearers of oppression here. I have heard person after person “wonder” why some of their African American brothers and sisters are not joining the fight. Why are some of them not out marching the streets and shaking the foundations of the world in this moment?

Well, have you asked them?

One said to me, “It’s just too much. I can’t go through this again.”

One said, “Racism is not a black problem. White people are the problem, and white people have to fix it themselves.”

One said, “It’s just exhausting. I am just so tired of having this same conversation over and over and over again, people feeling good because they asked a black person, but then never actually listening to what we say. And then nothing ever changes.”

All of these answers for me sound like things I have said when I am having to deal with my trauma. And my trauma is relatively shallow in comparison. Not only do the African Americans among us run a far greater risk of being traumatized every day in this country simply for driving a car or shopping in a nice store, but they stand on generations of literal beat downs. Those who have benefited from our society are also benefiting from standing on traumatized bodies. Bodies that sometimes can stand and fight, but sometimes have to retreat and recover. But retreat and recover is too often also just a benefit of power, something denied to the oppressed so that their souls and their selves just keep wearing down, wearing down, wearing down.

The Psalm that is quoted above is not a well-known one. Well, it might be more accurate to say it is not an often preached one. It is a Psalm of the traumatized voice. The Israelites are being hauled into exile. They are becoming a captive and enslaved people again. And as they are being marched around by power, their captors demand that they sing the songs of Zion.  Come on, buck up, campers!  Sing your happy songs! Entertain us! Or perhaps help us not feel so bad that we are treating our fellow humans this way. Absolve our guilt by using your voice and “being normal.”

But the captives refuse to sing. They can’t. Not in this moment. Silence is what they have to offer. They cannot join their voices in ways that the powerful expect. They choose instead to sit still, quiet.

But then, as the Psalm goes on, they do have their wishes. And they are the wishes of the traumatized. If you read further in the Psalm, they don’t want to sing. They want their captors to know the pain they have just known, including the pain of their children murdered by having their heads smashed against the rocks. Their trauma is real, live, and beyond words. And the silence in the midst should be deafening.

So before we stand in judgement of those who are not speaking, perhaps we instead should get quiet. Perhaps we should listen intently. Perhaps we should seek to hear the whispers of the traumatized voice. And when we do, perhaps then we will fully commit to stopping such pain from perpetuating in our world any longer. And then, we can use our collective voice to shout it down, in whispers and wails together.

Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash