While my colleagues do the smart thing of carefully crafting a response to the rising media attention on racial violence in our society, I thought I'd take the opposite approach and just blurt the first thing that erupts from my heart, in the spirit of hoping to engender discourse and not to be right but to strive for "right" together.
As leaders in child traumatic stress, we must acknowledge that much of our work involves bandaging the collateral damage of a violent war of oppression both historical and current that ravages our society; that the more we work with trauma the clearer our eyes become to the depth of pain we cause each other; that oftentimes the depth of pain foments from the ground of social injustice we perpetuate on the poor and the different; that if we truly care about alleviating the balance of trauma in our children’s lives, we as a group have to stand up to and compassionately acknowledge the deepest shame and guilt in our society for how we treat each other in the most micro and most institutionalized ways; and most importantly, that we strongly and firmly believe that the hope for a better society actually comes from the work we do to understand and heal trauma, because much of oppression and violence stems from trauma-reactive hurt and fear and only through this awareness can we reorient to our founding beliefs in the equality and dignity of all.