After the lecture given by Dr.Siddharth Shah, I started to ask so many questions in my mind. Not only the victims of any conflicts that go through trauma but it is us; people who are in this field, also experiencing trauma both directly and indirectly. This is a major theme added on to my knowledge that how much behind the scenes work the change maker really has to do; we have to be aware of this potential risk.
I read the book Trauma Stewardship by Connie Burk and Laura van Dernoot Lipsky which discusses the exact issue (and I highly recommend the book to people who are working in this field). During one part of the books, the writer talks about the experience of Diane Tatum, one of the author’s social worker friends, that she does not feel comfortable telling the people she works with about how great her life is. For example, when she goes back to work from weekend and the victim that she works with would ask the question how was your weekend? She feels obilgated to tell them how great her weekend was, hence she would always answer “it’s okay” regardless how amazing her weekend actually was. She mentioned that “She downplayed her happiness because she felt guilty that her life was going well, and she didn’t want to flaunt it in front of people who were having a difficult time”. Thinking about this book and what Dr.Saddharth Shah shares with us; this is definitely something we all will experience and I was surprised that I have never thought of this seriously before. My SPP fellows are very passionate about what they are doing and enjoy what they are doing, but when it comes to working with conflict; can we really say that we are happy with our jobs? What care we do to support each other? Peace buidling takes a life time to acheive, will we be happy to work for something that we might not even see the result? This is a question that I will have to explore deeply into. It has not been long since the program started but I have already felt that it has changed my whole perspective towards trauma (especially from the perspective of change makers). I can feel myself stepping outside of my comfort zone and exploring all these new perspectives, and I am truly excited to learn more about it.
