The Beginning of Extreme Trauma

I had coffee with a couple of friends recently and told them that one of our dear friends—and former client—is beginning to live through the family trauma our mass incarceration system. Right now, the family is enduring the immediate pain of our KY jail system: the shock, the confusion, the waiting, and loss of physical contact with their loved one. The jury, quite literally, is still out on how many decades that loved one will spend in prison. For them, as it once was for our family, it is a rude and painful awakening to a side of life most people are apathetic about.

The saddest part are the children involved. They are left to carry consequences they did not choose, missing the daily presence of a parent. There is a grief in that absence, and it often shapes a childhood.

I suspect this family will discover, as I have, that speaking about such trauma can become part of the healing. Not because the telling makes the pain disappear, but because it reminds others that they are not alone. Sometimes sharing the hardest parts of our lives opens a door for compassion, understanding, and unexpected connection.

I am still learning.  -Jim Peterson