Rev. Sunshine Wolfe  0:00  
I want to talk a little bit about the, How to be aware of and respond to trauma that will exist in your system. Upon returning and even now, as we're dealing with it, like what will that transition look like? And what are the things that you need to consider as you're moving forward. In fact, many of the things that have been said even up until this point are all ways in which you can effectively be thinking about how to care for your committee, community that has gone through a traumatic experience. And I know we've gone through a traumatic experience because my brain is fuzzy, I don't know how many of you may be familiar with the notion of like you, it's been Friday for three days, that happened to me last week, or you thought it was a month ago, dates are off, you're having a hard time remembering names, all those sorts of things. And that's because trauma can, is experienced by the body, but it is processed through the brain. And I'm not going to get too much into the science of it. But I do want you to know one important thing, which is that when our body experiences trauma, we actually experience a chemical divide between our ability to think and the words that form place called the Broca's area. And so you actually have a hard time describing what happened to you. And so how many of you have a hard time trying to describe what this COVID experience has been like, right? It's not an easy thing to understand or comprehend. And when you're talking about members of our congregation, we have folks who have experienced prior trauma where this is exacerbated what's already been going on in their lives and experiences, and all of that. And so we want to think carefully about what is that going to mean as people come back, because this has been a traumatic experience, trauma is simply a shock to the system. And it can be a mental shock, an emotional shock, a physical one, it can be a spiritual one. And we have lots of survivors of spiritual abuse in our congregations who may be triggered by all that's been going on, there's a lot that happens there. And so the reality is that this has been a tough time, and it has taken more energy to do everything, right. Have you felt that sense of like, it just takes more energy to even do the things that felt simple or basic before, that's going to be true? Well into our time of return into community with each other in a physical sense, right. So as we're coming back to what hopes folk, folks hope, we'll be back to some sort of sense of normalcy, it's not going to be that we can't turn the clock back, as was said earlier. And so it's important to know that your community is going to need you to repeat things a lot. When folks are in a trauma mindset, you have to repeat, you have to be repetitive. And everything that you communicate, we normally say in healthy times to communicate things seven times in seven different ways. And trauma time, you want to at least double that, if not quadruple that. So you're gonna want to repeat things over and over again, in as many places and you'll get sick of hearing it. But it may be the 15th time will be the time that a group of folks finally hear something because it's just too much, particularly in the beginning, It's gonna be a lot of information at once. And they're going to want you to try and do things the way they used to be done. Or they're going to want you to do the perfect multi platform experience that keeps all the new people that came during COVID. And all the folks who you know, are not necessarily able to come to the building and everybody in person, and have it all be perfect and good. And all of that languages, white supremacy, culture language, but it is also language, it's about how we try and keep control. When we're feeling like we're unraveling coming out of this process, your folks are going to feel like they're unraveling a little bit. Because when you start to come out of a traumatic experience, you start to actually have the space to feel and be aware of and process what has happened before. And so folks are going to be irrational, you're probably going to see more conflicts than you used to seeing. Folks may be more angry or quick to tears or even shut down. A simple conversation may lead to somebody disappearing for a couple of months. All these are normal things. And so you want to be able to prepare your community not just for what it means to do the practical of coming back. But what it means to care for your entire community as it is recovering from a traumatic experience. Does that make sense? Yeah. So it's not going to be instantly over. And we already know this is going to be a slow process as folks are getting vaccinated, even after everyone's been vaccinated for some of our folks, it still won't be safe for them to come out because of how immune compromised or other things are dealing with, probably won't matter how many people are vaccinated, they still may not be able to leave their homes. And so we're dealing with people in a lot of stages of engagement and where they can be in their world.

Folks will start to feel tired, or depressed, more exhausted. And I want to say when I say folks, I mean you not just the people you serve, the you the leaders, your ministers, your religious educators, your board, presidents, your RE teachers, your everybody who's doing any kind of leadership in your church or going through these things, too. And so you want to do the things that help care for people. Allow them to enter slowly and to resist that urgency that may come as a result of wanting to get back to things as normal. It's really common for folks after traumatic experience to not want to talk about anymore. Even a slight mention of COVID might get some folks a little reactive. And that's where ritual helps you with those kinds of things. There's going to be this kind of I like the language, I didn't create this, but somebody put it in the document, trauma residue. There's going to be some residual from this experience for a long time. And so it's important to be able to keep that present. I often work with congregations and they'll say after your well, why do we still have to keep talking about this. And it's because humans don't get over things quickly. It takes us years, particularly communities, can take five to 10 years of intentional effort to help a community do a significant amount of healing. So imagine that you're going to be doing some of this work, not for the next six months or a year but probably the next five to 10 years of helping yourself congregation kind of reassess. That may sound anxiety producing. But here's the other thing, it gives you lots of room to be nimble, to think about inclusion, to focus on your mission, you don't have to solve it all. And when you take away that time pressure, it gives everybody that emotional space to kind of recover and be in community.

What I want to close with is talking a little bit about the sense of urgency that can come. There can be this desire to do everything at once or to fix everything. And I think all that's gonna do is land you all exhausted and feeling like you're going nowhere. Because even if your congregation is saying, We want all this to be fixed at once, they're going to be exhausted by it all changing quickly to. Does that make sense? So they may say, we really want to have worship right now. And then they get to worship and like, we want worship in the building with everybody together, and then they get there. And they're overwhelmed by it. Because that's not what we've been doing for a year. And it's too much at once, right? So there's going to be a desire to rush and there's gonna be like, Oh, no, no, no, no. And that's a normal thing. So like, kind of, in trauma recovery work, we talk about having a window that has a shade, and the shade, you can slowly widen the window so you can let more light in. In other words, you open the capacity of a person to deal with the input that's coming at them. And so with your congregations and with you, as leaders, think about how do you not just suddenly open up the blinds, I don't know about you. But first thing in the morning, if somebody suddenly opens up the blinds, I'm screaming, I'm hiding myself under a blanket, I don't want to come out, I don't have enough coffee, you know, that starts to happen, right? You want to slowly open the window, so that folks have time to adjust and get comfortable with each other, again, to process all of these deep emotions that are coming up inside them to, slowly open the window where everybody can kind of have some capacity. And even after you do that, there will be some of your folks, and it may be you, who it takes a long time to really be open, able to enter back in in a way that's helpful and meaningful. So look for lots of opportunities to take this at a slow pace, start with distance things out doors, and keep doing some things online. Think about what works in your congregation so that you're able to have that connection. But folks are not getting overwhelmed by having everybody together at once or trying to get back to something that they may think they want but aren't quite emotionally, or particularly their brain is not quite ready to process yet. Because really, it is between the ears. It's the processing part of our brains that we want this thing but then it's too much. And so you want to pay attention to that, that gap. How are you slowly opening the window, rather than just going back to the sunlight that used to be? Yeah, that's what I have.

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