Before I joined the Center for Social Innovation, I worked at a residential treatment program for adolescent girls with behavioral health issues. All had experienced severe or recurring trauma. Most were neglected or abused by a person close to them. For some, their childhood trauma included periods of homelessness. They had spent time on the streets, in shelters, doubled up with friends or family members, and in unstable housing where they were one crisis away from another bout of homelessness.
I can no more remember
What brought me here
Than bone answers bone in the arm
Or shadow sees shadow—
—Billy the Kid, Jack Spicer
The other day I said to someone, The thing about trauma is that it just puts you in this place of chronic mourning. You just spend a lot of time mourning losses that were a long time ago and what you will lose in the future as a result. I was thinking about a time I was sitting in my therapist’s office and felt like crying when I said, What would I be capable of if I didn’t have to spend so much energy managing my own mind? Who could I have been?
Sam* had an intense stare. She would look at you, eyes unblinking, with an intensity that was unwavering. It was hard not to feel uncomfortable under that gaze—to search for what it was you had said or done that was worthy of such concentrated scrutiny. Perhaps if she hadn’t seemed so intimidating, I would have asked her about her gaze the first time she locked her eyes with mine. But her very presence didn’t invite questions. Her small, but lean and muscular frame matching the hardness in her face; her skin weathered and aged by years of drug and alcohol use and a life full of uncertainty about the most basic needs—shelter, food, money to survive.
The current cold weather reminded me of a story. A few months ago I read about a life-size statue of an ordinary man that was placed on the snowy grounds of a women’s college campus in Wellesley, Massachusetts (Wellesley College). He appeared to be sleepwalking with arms outstretched, eyes closed, and wearing only his underwear. The statue provoked outrage and controversy after its installment last winter.
