Original Twitter Thread: https://twitter.com/czedwards/status/1325257381257879555?s=21
November 7, 2020
Hey all —
At the end of trauma (or when you know the trauma will be ending) everything feels incredibly shaky.
You’ve gotten used to the feeling of the earth shaking, and when it stops, it takes a minute for your emotional equilibrium to catch up.
It’s normal.
It’s OK.
You’re OK.
You’ve learned a bunch of coping strategies, and those will stick around for a while. Some aren’t great, but that’s okay.
You’ve also learned to focus on the goals that matter most.
And that’s worth keeping.
We’ll never be the SAME as we were.
But that doesn’t mean we’re broken.
It’s okay to be shaky.
It’s okay to be uncertain.
It’s okay to mistrust people around you.
It’s okay to be angry.
It’s okay to need change with everything in you.
It’s okay to want to sleep for a few months.
It’s okay to feel high, euphoric.
It’s okay to cry for what we’ve lost.
The stuff to watch out for:
Wanting to hurt someone/a group.
Wanting to watch them suffer.
Wanting it all to just go away.
Wanting yourself to just go away.
That’s when you might want to call a crisis line, talk to your therapist or doctor or just step back & think it through.
Justice is not vengeance. Wanting to see justice done means that the consequences of the harm done to all of us is meted out in our name.
We don’t let victims sit on juries or be the prosecutor for good reasons.
Justice means for the group, by the group, through the group.
It’s hard to get there emotionally!
Which is why we have to TALK about it.
We have suffered trauma.
It’s been unfair and cruel, and unevenly cruel.
Justice doesn’t mean forgive.
It doesn’t mean forget.
It doesn’t mean excusing a perpetrator from the consequences of their choices.
And it CERTAINLY doesn’t mean pardoning the harms done (in any sense of the word).
It does mean we use the process.
But for now:
Rest. Recharge. Rejoice if you feel like it.
Mourn as you feel called.
Expect to swing through all of the feelings, including none.
It’s okay.
