Below are two excerpts from Healing Connection: A Community Approach to Childhood Trauma and Attachment – first an excerpt from Chapter 1, pages 6-9 which lays out the definitions of, and challenges related to Collective Trauma, followed by an excerpt from Chapter 17, pages 324-25 and 328-30 offering tips to help you be part of the collective solutions through Advocacy. We hope that these excerpts will inspire and equip you to get more involved in addressing collective trauma in your own community. For more information about how to purchase one or multiple copies of the full Healing Connections book, click here

Excerpt from Healing Connections, Chapter 1: Collective Trauma collaboratively written by Daryle Conquering Bear Crow, Gaelin Elmore, Mary Lyons, Araceli Salcedo, Dannette R. Smith, and Chauncey Strong, with Sue Badeau

No child exists in a vacuum. Each child is part of a family, a culture, and a community. If we are to understand children’s development and support them in not only healing but thriving after trauma, we must understand their experiences in the context of the families and communities from which they come and into which they will journey throughout their lives. ….

Collective Trauma:
In this chapter, we are intentionally using the term “Collective Trauma” to refer to a range of trauma histories and experiences that may be part of a child’s story….. we have chosen to use the term collective trauma as a broad and inclusive way to discuss these complex traumatic exposures and responses you may see in children you care for. One reason to use such a broad phrase is that, unlike some of the earlier terms, it does not imply blame or shame (as do terms such as intergenerational or multi-generational or racial trauma). It merely describes a shared experience that many families or communities may have in common. ….

A second reason we are using this term is to underscore the current relevance to children in our homes. While many of the events that create collective traumatic exposure have taken place in the past (hence terms such as “historic trauma”) current experiences can also result in collective trauma. Collective trauma is still happening. It is continuously moving like a powerful river. Sometimes the currents are swirling with such strength it seems like we, collectively, might be going backwards. The continuous flow of the river is relentless, hardly offering a moment to catch one’s breath. Some current examples may include:

1. Living through a global pandemic
2. Current stories of missing and murdered Native American women
3. Separation of Latino children and parents at the border
4. Disproportionate law enforcement violence towards young men of color, and mass incarceration of African Americans
5. Laws which shame and de-humanize transgendered persons….

Finally, the term collective trauma provides a foundation to help us understand the phenomenon known as “cascading collective traumas” described by Silver et al. (2020) as a way of understanding the cumulative impact of multiple, simultaneous, widespread traumatic experiences such as the COVID-19 pandemic, heightened racial tensions and related social justice actions, unprecedented weather disasters and political upheavals….

Collective Resilience:

Coined by Resmaa Menakem (2017), the term “collective resilience” conveys the power of strength, hope and healing that can arise from shared experiences with trauma and survival. Just as collective trauma can be like a relentless river, collective resilience can be that place where the river meets the ocean. There is a transition from the danger-zone into the healing, life-giving power of the sea. Collective resilience builds on the idea of Post-Traumatic Growth (PTG) first described by Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun in the mid-1990s and further detailed more recently (Tedeschi et al., 2018) as a way to understand the transformative strengths and resiliency often seen in people who have experienced significant trauma in their lives.

Like collective trauma, collective resilience can also be passed from one generation to another. Mary Lyons explains, “Many in traditional cultures believe that all the memories of the ancestors are planted like a seed into each new baby of the next generation. The elders are the gardeners doing their best to keep all the best elements of the culture and history alive in each new generation.”

Providing children and families the opportunities to connect culturally not only supports healing from trauma but provides a pathway to wellness. It is also important to be mindful that no single set of characteristics fully defines a community or cultural group.

Excerpt from Chapter 17: Advocacy, by Sue Badeau

Advocacy: It is All About Relationships

Advocacy can be an individual endeavor or can involve an organized group effort. As is true for everything else we have discussed in this book, advocacy is “all about relationships.” The connections you form, as the child’s caregiver, within the various systems, community organizations and social groups related to your child’s daily life will pay dividends across time and lay the groundwork for successful advocacy efforts.

For example, if you have built a relationship based on mutual trust and respect with your child’s health care provider, they will, in turn, come to value your knowledge and expertise related to your description of your child’s strengths and needs. If you are seen as that parent who only shows up to complain, they may take your input less seriously or meet you in an adversarial posture.

Advocacy efforts will be, from time to time, adversarial, if you are seeking to get access to services that have been denied or deemed unsuitable for your child. However, to the extent that you can engage as a team member, in partnership, with your children’s providers and support network, the more success you will have in the long run. As the saying goes, “you will catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”

Effective advocates will be well-informed, organized, respectful, confident, and flexible. Julian’s story illustrates how his kinship caregivers (grandparents) and biological mother worked together as advocates to ensure he was receiving attachment and trauma-responsive support at his elementary school.

Types of Advocacy –

First there are three types of advocacy related to who will benefit from the desired outcome:

1. Individual Advocacy: Advocating to impact a specific individual: a child, a caregiver, a staff member of an organization, etc. For example, a caregiver notices that every time a child goes for their home visit they come back in a highly agitated state, and it takes days to help them re-regulate. So, they advocate for additional supports to be put in place for the birth family and child to increase the safety of the visits and reduce the stress for the child.
2. Group or Class Advocacy: Advocating to impact an entire group of people: all the students in a school class or entire school facility, all the clients served by a mental health agency, all the children with disabilities who have been denied access to a recreational program in your city, all the staff at a childcare center, etc.
3. System Advocacy: Advocating to address systemic issues or barriers pervasive throughout an entire system. This type of advocacy often requires legislative action. Examples include advocacy for systemic health care reforms for members of the 2SLGBTQ+ community, advocating for insurers to provide parity for physical and mental health care, advocacy related to systemic racism in the justice system, etc.

Next there are three types of advocacy related to who is engaged in the advocacy efforts:

1. Individuals: One parent, caregiver, teacher, social worker or concerned citizen advocating for a change in a situation or system. For example, one caseworker advocates for a waiver in policy so that three siblings in foster care can share a bedroom in their new foster home.
2. Peers: People who share the same challenges, often people with lived experience in a particular system or situation, banding together to advocate for change in a situation or system. For example, all the residents of a low-income housing complex band together to advocate for improved outside lighting after three residents have been assaulted in the past month.
3. Community Organizing or Movement Building Advocacy: People coming together across many different walks of life to effect change in a situation or system. For example, a large and diverse coalition forms in a community after a deadly school shooting to advocate against gun violence including people from multiple faith communities, atheists, conservatives, liberals, parents, grandparents, corporate leaders, small business owners, etc.

Finally, there are three types of advocacy related to the situation that the advocacy efforts are intended to address:

1. Preventative: When an individual or group recognizes a potential problem and advocates for changes that will prevent bad outcomes. For example, during the summer a parent learns that her 7th grade daughter who has juvenile diabetes and is on the autism spectrum has been assigned to the 9:30 AM lunch period at school for the upcoming year. The parent knows that this will result in significant behavioral and medical issues for her child, so she engages in preventative advocacy to remedy the situation before it blows up into a crisis.
2. Crisis: Advocacy that takes place in response to a specific incident or crisis. A teen attempts suicide after waiting over six hours to be seen in the local ER and then is sent home with no services. The caregiver learns this is the fourth such incident in the past year and bands together with other caregivers/parents to advocate for changes in mental health access in their community.
3. Historical Redress: Advocacy that is not in response to a particular specific incident, but which seeks to change an ongoing or historically prob
4. lematic situation. For example, there is no specific diagnosis for childhood developmental or complex trauma in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), which can result in children and teens being misdiagnosed or missing out on necessary services (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). A coalition of parents and providers are working together to advocate for a change in the DSM manual to recognize developmental/complex trauma as a diagnosis distinct from PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder).