Sunshine Skyways

I am almost finished reading Kai Erikson's book Everything in Its Path: Destruction of Community in the Buffalo Creek Flood. One of the chapters is devoted to descriptions of individual trauma and another to collective trauma. The individual traumas are described within the stories of the survivors, many of whom have post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Coupled with those experiences of personally witnessing people drown and seeing and smelling death and destruction were the loss of community: the Buffalo Creek community was destroyed by the flood. What a tragedy to lose both one's sense of self and one's community. A close friend of mine shares something with the survivors of Buffalo Creek; she has PTSD. She did not survive a natural disaster; instead, she is a victim of domestic violence. She was not physically abused, but emotionally abused. In many studies of disaster, there is one event at a specific time, such as an earthquake or flood, that is the cause of individual trauma; however, my friend was a victim of repeated attacks over a period of many years when she was a child in her parents' home. Whereas a natural disaster or technological disaster is a public and often publicized event, what occurred to my friend in her parents' home was private. Her attacker's public and private personas were very different. The attacker played the role of a wonderful Christian and loving parent in public, but turned into a hateful murderous witch within the walls of the home. It seems those who experience individual trauma from public events may have an advantage over those who experience individual trauma from private/domestic events in the sense that the cause of their experience is already out there in the media and it's okay to talk about it. Those who are abused by a parent or other relative are encouraged to remain silent; it remains private, within the home. It took many years for my friend to confide in me about her PTSD and her parent with borderline personality disorder because she was afraid that I (like others) would not want to hear her story and/or would find it unbelievable. The parent with the mental illness certainly affected my friend and her family. There is both a personal and collective trauma. In time I hope my friend finds more people that she can talk to about her painful childhood experiences and cry with, and that by doing so she can further be healed.