Essay On Collective Trauma

Collective trauma is trauma that happens to large groups of individuals and can be transmitted generationally and across communities. War, genocide, slavery, terrorism, and natural disasters can cause collective trauma. Some of the symptoms of collective trauma include rage, depression, denial, survivor guilt and internalized oppression, as well as physiological changes in the brain and body which can bring on chronic disease. The social frameworks in which the mass trauma of thousands of people occur and in which their recovery should progress have qualities that distinguish it in important ways from individualized trauma. The symptoms may be similar, but, the social contexts in which individual victimization and exposure to organized violence
Beau Willie has killed Naomi and Kwame, Crystal’s two kids in an effort to get her to marry him. He kicks the screen out of the window, and tells her that he will drop the kids if she doesn’t marry him. From the pure shock, her voice is reduced to a whisper than he drops the kids. For a mother this is the worse trauma a women can fathom. But in the final poem named the “a layin on of hands”, we see a healing, and renewal of empowerment, friendship, womanhood. The laying on of hands is a religious ritual which are found throughout the world in varying forms. This practice is used as both a symbolic and formal method of invoking the Holy Spirit primarily during baptisms, healing services, blessings, and ordination, and along with a variety of other holy ceremonies. It this instance it’s the process of collectively invoking that godly power and using it to heal and power those who have been broken. It is a manifestation of female divinity and strength that comes from “natural entities”. It’s the mending of the mind, body and spirit. And in For Colored girls… we see this