Grace Boda's Talk

One thing Grace said, about the unsolved question regarding why it is that some people's trauma hold them back [from advancing in stages on the trajectory of adult development] while others' experience of trauma catapults them forward, struck me so much so that I could not pay attention to anything she said thereafter. That is to say, I listened, but my mind had already jumped on board the question, mostly because of the confidence and conviction with which she declared that nobody in the field had any answers. I want to mention but not prolong the observation that at this day and age it isn't so much a mystery that questions framed by binaries will evoke an exploration that more or less is guided by a theme of "well, it's a little bit of both... there's a spectrum... humans are more complex than an 'either-or' inquisitional formula can possibly encase," and other remarks of that sentiment that occasionally take away from the actual themes and topics of the conversation. So, having said that, I will admit that a day prior to our class with Grace Boda, I had been working on this question in fact in a framework involving two people, because I guess there is something of a binary worth adhering to when launching into an investigation of this type of question. My framing involves myself and my grandmother. She passed away a few years ago from Alzheimers, and the disease was advancing considerably during the time she lived with us; the capacity in which I got to know her was through the lens of her Alzheimers, which means she’d tell me stories about her childhood and people who were important to her. The first time she told me about the massacres, I must have been too young to register anything other than how horrific it must have been. Recently, I’ve felt the need to research what these massacres even were, as the events she described did not, in retrospect, come across as something which wouldn’t have been recorded as an important historical happening. Following a Google search of “massacres ukraine poland” led to websites and articles about the massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia. A brief summary of the massacres is that the Ukrainians in areas where both Polish and Ukrainian populations resided took part in an ethnic cleansing of all the Poles, most actively in rural and small-town regions. My grandmother, about 11 or 12 years of age, was on her way to visit her grandmother who lived out in a rural village when her best friend, a Ukrainian girl, urged her to do something else, to stay in the city, do something fun there. Luckily, my grandma was persuaded, and indeed stayed, while her family was being slaughtered. “My uncle, who was one hundred years old, was killed. One of my aunts was pregnant, and they sliced open her stomach and womb, then left her to bleed to death.” The images and stories she shared about that period of time have forever haunted me, and for most of my life knowing my grandma, I couldn’t consciously even bring myself to imagine what it must have done for her. This friend she had, whose older brother was one of the murderers himself, this friend that did not let herself be paralyzed by the horror of what was occurring and urgently and lovingly warned my grandmother to stay, not letting her panic show, but instead distract the both of them from events that were perhaps beyond their own comprehension* (and definitely beyond mine to this day) and keep each other safe. This friendship, as described to me by my grandmother regarding this time as well as other adventures in which the two partook, has always seemed to me one of the most beautiful friendships I’ve had the honor of hearing about, in a way that definitely takes precedence over constantly grappling with what the massacres must have been like, and yet I have come to believe that this traumatic event in my family history, among countless others, merits my interrogation. The question I framed to myself, I’ll admit, involves a lot of reduction and sterilization, but I suppose those are processes we must permit and allow ourselves for initial engagement with a question. My question is phrased along the lines of “Why is it that, from my perspective, my grandparents and parents seem (and have seemed) to operate in a relatively functional manner despite having lived through substantial historical, national, and cultural traumas (the massacres, WWII, communist rule, martial law, etc.) whereas I, not having personally in my lifetime experienced such poignant hardships, seem relentlessly disturbed, exhausted, over-consumed, and troubled by my own mind?” I’ve asked myself at various points, what is my trauma? but the question seemed unable to offer any interrogatory guidance or clues. It then occurred to me, that the Catholic Church plays and has played a highly different role for my parents and grandparents than it does for me. Could it be, I asked myself, that their unwavering faith and resolute trust and commitment in and to the institution of the Catholic Church has kept them from faltering irreversibly from a stable life trajectory, or at least appearing and presenting as mentally sound** individuals? Is it, perhaps, that not being given the opportunity to exclusively experience a trauma as an individual, while already inhabiting a community-based, can enable and allow the individual to progress and belong to the trajectory that is, regardless of traumatic disruptions, a societally normalized life progression? With the collective space that is religion, is it taken for granted that the healing and recovery will be ensured by, provided for, and provided by everyone involved? I wonder these things because the Catholic Church has been for me, as a queer person, as a musician, as a student, a most complex and conflicting space, so much so that I cannot find unadulterated comfort in Catholic spaces. I have inherited knowledge, both intellectual and genetically physical, of these traumas, yet I have not been afforded the same guarantee of safety and collective progress in a Catholic community. I know that this one presence is not the only answer to why I function and think differently as a result of my difficulties (and that generational differences, as well as the fact that the space I occupy is composed by my ancestors and family, are factors) but I think it is definitely the beginning of an exploration of the question Grace Boda framed, a question to which “nobody in the field has an answer” (possibly perhaps it isn’t even the right question to be asking) Regardless, it was rather curious to witness its asking while I myself have begun to do so as well, in the context of my life and the lives of my family.

* There is something remarkable about action taken in response to an actuality that is beyond one's comprehension. The gut feelings and instincts and impulses that work on adhering to the face-value of an event, responding in a manner which keeps the body safe, a self-protecting measure that works successfully because of how confidently the body tells the mind of how dangerous the situation is. It makes me wonder if this is a mechanism to which mindfulness could perhaps be a conflicting project. I will write and post separately about this potential conflict, as to not detract from the more central investigation in this comment)

** I don't know enough about Alzheimers, other than that it is partly genetic, to be able to incorporate that fact into what I mean by "mentally sound."