Building On Trauma 1

It doesn't really sound like a good idea, does it, Gentle Reader?  To imagine any shakier foundation than building and developing a life, a culture, a nation, an entire civilization, based on one's horrible knowledge of life and all the wounds of spirit and soul included.

I can understand now why I feel so drawn to Latin America.   My life, and the various and uniform cultures, nations and civilization of Latin America are all found on trauma.  Scary thought, eh?  Those countries, be they Mexico, Peru, Colombia or Bolivia, or pick any one, many are composed of the descendants of trauma.  Each nation was forged on trauma: slavery, serfdom, rape, autocracy, theocracy, toxic Christianity, class and social inequality, extreme poverty, genocide.  The Mestizo population largely was born of children of rape.  It is highly doubtful that most of the indigenous women who were taken by white husbands were anything but "taken".  Even if they were legitimately baptized and married, who's to say that only a few of them were truly willing and desirous of their white husbands?  Given the choice, that they weren't a conquered people, what would be the likelihood of most of those gals picking a smelly Spanish guy over one of their indigenous cohorts who bathed regularly and treated them with dignity and respect?  Not very much.

The whole dynamic of religion and spirituality in Latin American countries has been particularly intriguing.  In many cases there has been a merging of the Catholic and the indigenous practices.  I have already mentioned the Mexican Day of the Dead, a truly Aztec celebration with Catholic window-dressing.

Trauma never heals.  It never magically disappears.  It will always be there.  This is simply a matter of recovery, which involves rebuilding and taking back our lives.  So this has been my experience in my personal journey of recovery.  I have had to draw from a multiplicity of resources in order to heal and get on with my life.  I still carry trauma.  It will always be there, informing and influencing my life, my decisions.

Trauma is the rapist's penis forcing us open.  This, I know, is a horrible metaphor to use and not in anyway is this an apology for sexual assault.  But assaults, violations of spirit, soul and body do happen in life, constantly.  They have always occurred and likely always will, so long as we are around as a human species.

Life claims us from our mothers, and then we begin to die.  But it is in dying that we are born.  I have seen so much evidence of this mysterious process, in my own life and in the Latino cultures, this mystery of death and rebirth, be it the human sacrifice on top of Aztec or Mayan pyramids to bring to life to crops and the cosmos, or Christ crucified on the cross then risen again from the dead.

Pick any one.  This metaphor of death and rebirth abounds throughout the religions, beliefs and shamanic practices since the dawn of time.  We do not justify nor promote the causes of trauma, as inevitable as they are.  But by learning to live with trauma, to accept its ravages and to welcome this as a new opening, a new beginning and a new life, I think we can truly build upon it something dynamic, living and redolent with mystic realism and grace.