Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World

7. Social Instruments of Healing

H ealing begins with a choice. Survivors of extreme violence must decide which reality to live in—their old, broken world or a new one. Day by day and hour by hour, violence challenges people to use their traumatic experiences to build new lives and to focus on the present instead of the past. The French Postimpressionist artist Paul Cezanne captures the importance of the here and now when he advises artists: Right now a moment of time is fleeting by! Capture its reality in paint! To do this we must put all else out of our minds. We must become that moment, make ourselves a sensitive recording plate...give the image of what we actually see, forgetting everything that has been before our time.1 This quote is also fitting advice for survivors, because the act of healing is a form of artistry. Through their traumatic experiences survivors become, most unwillingly, “sensitive recording plates.” Chapter 7 Traumatic moments become engraved in their minds, and these images can overwhelm them. In the depth of their anguish, survivors cannot see that they still have a choice in how to live their lives. They can remain locked in a world of horrendous images and unbearable feelings, or they can create something entirely new in their lives, which will be a source of strength and vitality. Cezanne’s observation does not explain the process by which artists are able to forget “everything that has been before our time.” For survivors, this process begins with a decision that takes an exceptional degree of courage. In our modern world, the word courage conjures up images of bold, aggressive action in the face of a lifethreatening situation. But the courage required to go on living after a horrific past is different: It is a mental attitude, which is usually invisible to others. People who have experienced extreme violence, whether rape, torture, or the murder of a parent or child, often have to decide not only to live in a certain way but also whether to live at all. Ordinary life traumas, although not as severe, can involve this choice as well. It takes courage not to give in to despair. The opposite of despair is hope, and to hope is to imagine and desire again the very things in life that were cherished and destroyed. Survivors and their therapists often take for granted that this fundamental decision to live is made daily. The choice to go on is needed to begin, as well as continue, the process of healing. Selfhealing cannot function and complete its rehabilitation unless there is a continual, active affirmation of life. But health professionals are afraid to discuss this decision openly with the survivor, since many would not know what to do if the patient articulated feelings of hopelessness and the wish to die. Healers need to be wary of absorbing the survivor’s pessimism, thereby becoming unsure of their ability to assist the patient. 158 Richard F. Mollica At a meditation offered by the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, who as a young man four decades earlier had resisted the Vietnam War, this Buddhist sutra was read: A man dying of thirst is walking along a dusty road and he eventually comes to a crossroads. Miraculously, he notices on the road a few drops of water left by a water buffalo that had just passed by. Seeing the drops, he falls to his knees and puts his lips to the earth in order to suck up the drops. After finishing this act, he tries to determine where the water buffalo came from. Not knowing, he chooses one of the forks in the road to follow. Imagine this thirsty man kneeling down to put his lips to the road to take in a few drops of water. We do not know if he died of thirst or not, yet at this moment he saw reality clearly, tasted the water, and tried to follow the water buffalo. Certainly those few drops did not quench his thirst, but they represented the hope that a life-giving source was up ahead. All therapists have the privilege of witnessing this act of courage in traumatized persons. A Rwandan woman who survived the mass killings in her country , in which her parents, husband, and six of her seven children were all murdered, was trying to escape with her small son to a refugee camp...