What if the Story Was the Trauma?
Over the course of January, I’ve had the honor of holding space for the study of the “new story” with a wonderful cohort from around the world. Along the way, I’ve been in conversation with teachers, authors, and elders who have shaped this inquiry—interviewing author, futurist, and systems-scientist Riane Eisler (author of The Chalice and the Blade), as well as “thrutopian wellness coach” Chris Johnstone (co-author of Active Hope with the late Joanna Macy). I’ve revisited past conversations on Nonviolence Radio with Kazu Haga on trauma and “fierce vulnerability,” and turned again to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
Nevertheless, it was still a surprise, during a conversation with my mentor Michael Nagler, that I had what feels like one of the most important realizations about the new story and human nature—one that somehow has been nourished by all of these voices, interviews, readings, and conversations. Namely, what we call the “old story” is a story of abuse of our human nature.
It’s a story we’ve been made to believe about ourselves as species and about the connections that have sustained life since the beginning: that we humans are mean, greedy, out for ourselves, unkind beings lost in a world that has no meaning and no purpose but to get more and more stuff. We are violent; the world is violent and dead; and nothing we do makes a difference. This is the stuff of gaslighting and abuse. We come to internalize this story about ourselves, and we as societies then act out in ways that are informed by that trauma—of being separate from one another, the Earth, and from ourselves. Collectively, this story has been our abuser.
Can you hear the voice, too? “You’ll never fix these problems. This is who you are. Don’t even try.”
I am holding grief for this recognition. Because when we talk about the “new story”—that we human beings are more than just these physical bodies; that we are body, mind, and spirit, nourished by support at all three levels and then some; that deep down we as a species are good and need meaning, nurturance, and care; and more than that, that we have an inner power of nonviolence we can use to reconnect ourselves to the world around us, to one another, and to ourselves—we immediately face pushback and disbelief. “This can’t be true. We can’t believe it.” We have been misled.
The new story is a story of healing, of wholeness, of reclaiming ourselves from that cultural abuser in all of its forms who has made us feel so small and worthless. Nonviolence plays an essential role here. Because when we begin to tap into our capacity for it—through practice, study, and the small, brave willingness to believe there may be something of value within us despite what we are being sold—we start to build connections where there was disconnection; agency where there was a sense of powerlessness; and active love where there was ignoring or indifference.
On NPR at the start of the month, Krista Tippett invited us to ask a question instead of make a resolution. So this is my question: What if the story itself was the trauma? It is not an answer, but an invitation—and I invite others to join me in thinking about it.