activism – Page 5

Subtitle: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity

Recommended to me by: listening to Nadine Burke Harris’s TED talk

This is a skillful blend of memoir and scientific information about the effects of trauma, presented for the layperson. Nadine Burke Harris shares how as a newly licensed doctor she founded a pediatric clinic in Bayview, the poorest section of San Francisco with the most at-risk patients, and how that clinic came to focus on trauma as the underlying cause of a lot of medical issues, especially for children. Later she founded the Center for Youth Wellness, also in San Francisco.

She does not dwell on the effects of being a Black woman, but she does not skip over them either. She notes the benefits of networking with other women and offering each other support. While marginalization and racism contribute to people’s load of trauma, trauma is not only a “poor, Black issue.” Privilege does not exempt people from trauma or its long-term effects.

There is a strong correlation between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) and health issues caused by the body’s ongoing stress response. The stress response can be buffered by strong relationships with caring adults.

Nadine Burke Harris developed a screening tool that asks a parent about the number of a child’s ACEs, but does not ask them to disclose the stories involved. She advocates for this screening tool to be used everywhere, just as infants are now universally screened for hypothyroid and jaundice.

The treatments for a body dysregulated by trauma are sleep, mental health, healthy relationships, exercise, nutrition, and meditation. Schools that help children regulate their nervous systems rather than punishing them for “acting out” enjoy both a more peaceful atmosphere and higher success rates by every measure.

(While screening is catching on in medical offices, I hear from nurses that treatment is catching on less quickly, leaving them in the frustrating position of knowing that people’s issues are caused by trauma, but not having the time and resources to help them.)

Highly recommended both for the information about the effects on trauma, and the memoir of a groundbreaking scientist and doctor who is radically improving how we care for both children and adults affected by trauma.

Available at bookshop.org.

Subtitle: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy

This book, published in 2012, is a practical manual on how to live in challenging times. It has only become more necessary since it first came out.

It starts with three stories of our times, Business As Usual, the Great Unraveling, and the Great Turning. The book is written to those with enough privilege to choose Business As Usual, with encouragement to avoid the despair of staying in the Great Unraveling of runaway climate change, and choose the Great Turning toward sustainable lifestyles instead. Oddly, the book does not address privilege directly at all. It does look like they’re moving toward more awareness of oppression.

Joanna Macy leads workshops in the Work That Reconnects, a four step process. It is rooted in gratitude, grows into honoring our pain, blooms into seeing with new eyes, and creates seeds of going forth, taking action. These steps can happen in the span of a lifetime, and in the span of a few minutes. We go around the steps repeatedly, in a spiral. More about the spiral, with a great image.

Gratitude reconnects us with the web of life that supports us, and reminds us that we do not live in isolation. We are part of that interconnected web, part of the living Earth.

Honoring our pain and the pain of the earth allows that energy to move through us, and to move us toward action. It also gives permission to those around us to acknowledge their own pain, and connects us with each other in witnessing and giving/receiving support.

When we shift into gratitude and acknowledge our pain, we can shift to a larger perspective and connect both with our inner witness self, and with the voice of our community and the earth. We can start to see our power-within and power-with, instead of staying in hopelessness or power-over.

The seeds of action come from that wider perspective, and from opening to visions of how we want to live and how we can get there. We ask what wants to move through us. We move in the direction of our strengths, and treat our enthusiasm as a renewable resource that needs maintenance. We reach out for support.

We live with uncertainty. We don’t know whether things will turn toward being better or worse, so we lean our small weight in the direction of better. We gradually (or suddenly) move toward living more sustainably and happily.

Recommended for finding a way forward in these difficult times. This book is based in environmental activism, but is more generally applicable. It does point out that anyone living in the story of the Great Turning is an activist, whether we go to protests or not. No matter what the ultimate outcome is, I’d rather live day to day incrementally supporting the world I want to see, rather than contributing to the disaster by ignoring it or despairing.

Available at bookshop.org.

“The Deepest Well” by Nadine Burke Harris, MD

“Active Hope” by Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone