Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by Laura Van Dernoot Lipsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I brought this book with me to the Central African Republic, and read it by headlamp in a dark room after they shut the generator off for the night each night over about a week. I started the book about 3 weeks after I arrived in this northwestern town comprised of burned and knocked down houses, empty quartiers, and, at the time, two crowded tent cities, one surrounding the main church and its many outbuildings, the Christian camp, at one point some 40,000 strong when the vast majority of the town cowered under Seleka control, and the other the square block of muddied grass surrounding a primary school in the center of town, where the Muslims were confined behind armed guards after a pogrom five months ago following the Seleka departure drove them out of their homes and storefronts. Within this context of tired, displaced people my work took me outside the city limits on rural roads that hadn't been traversed by cars since the last Seleka pickup gunned it down the dirt paths, stopping to loot and burn and rape and burn, last fall. It's spring now, and I work with people who are offering meager help in the face of incomprehensible terror and hard times-- besides the violence there is the lack (of food, of seed, of tilled land, of tools, of clothes, of bedding, of anything one could have in a house that could go up in flames) to contend with, and it is just as hard.
The book is now in the hands of a 20-something Central African coworker who daily leads teams to rural villages, taking responsibility for their wellbeing in the face of constant roadblocks and hassling from armed men, who I think will be the friend I take away from this place in my heart in some many months from now when it's time for me to leave the people who were born here and will stay.
I'm writing this from a peaceful place in Bangui, the capital city where gunshots ring out across the night but there's fuel and food and places to go at night before curfew, to see other people and speak English, which is delicious. There are flowers and birds and a view of the Oubangui river and the Congo rainforest in the distance in front of me as I type. When I got to Bangui for a few days of rest, I felt urgent and sad and anrgy, at a loss for how to negotiate (a) people who didn't realize how bad it is in the northwest, (b) people who knew and also were able to set it aside and enjoy life and beer and each other, and (c) trying to sleep in a quiet, comfortable bed with AC instead of a hot, no-fan concrete box with a thin mattress and the constant sounds of animals and people sleeping in tents around my little enclosed private room all night. But comfort and happy, relaxed people are not the enemy and they are not causing the pain of the people I work with and for. These other aid workers are here to devote their lives too to help and cope with limits of resources and time and energy and everything, too. The anger I felt, unasked for, welling up at their ease was both erasing their own trauma and so misdirected. It was my first vision of how hard it is to do this work, when I was able to see that part of me in others that at this moment I can't access, that I have shut down: ease. Lipsky warned of 'persecution complexes,' and I felt one manifest. I was glad to have read about it so I could identify the feelings, sit with them, and move on.
I've read a lot of books and trauma and practiced care of secondary trauma. I've survived PTSD from sexual assault and worked/volunteered/practiced advocacy and support for other survivors; I've lived abroad where I spent isolated months immersed in malnutrition and agriculture where it is hard to grow food-- from these previous experiences and primary/secondary exposures, I've learned tools, techniques, practices, and sources of strength. I am implementing them here in CAR, I prepared. Some of what I got from this book was a feeling of strength and resilience, because I know and do already much of what Lipsky teaches.
Some of what I got from Lipsky was frustration. She directs much of the book to burnout and compassion fatigue, and so many of the stories and advice are about how to gently pry oneself loose from the work at hand. But what if this work is-- at the same time it is so, so harsh and hard-- giving me life and vibrant energy and the most deep satisfaction in action I have ever found? I had an Owen Meany moment when I felt the 10 years of study and research and lesser but related jobs finally come out in responsibilities into which I was able now to step. Lipsky, I needed more joy and embracing of the work itself, I needed more love and advice for how to continue the work through the trauma, not how to shy away from traumatic, traumatizing work. I am fresh, of course. I can tolerate a book that doesn't always speak to me.
In general, I think this is not the end of books for caring for trauma. I like some other books with more practical step-by-step guides. I like the lessons I've gotten from years of yoga classes with teachers, from a couple periods of time with therapists. I like the lists I've prepared for myself of herbal tinctures and writing and people to contact and small rituals and fantasy novels and a stock of yoga and high-intensity workout videos. This book is a very good introduction to self-care while giving care and it is good for those who have burned through their candle. I'll guard the burnout advice in my heart and try to cultivate ease.
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