Tails of Trauma.
In this month's blog, Peter shares his very personal story about Trauma.
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Hello readers! Welcome back to my blog. If you’re a first time reader thank you for joining in.
In previous blogs, I touched on aspects of the following topics: disability, unconscious bias, transparency, love and inspiration.
In this blog, I want to speak about trauma. Yes, trauma. This is a very delicate subject, especially close to the holidays; however, trauma is something that needs to be talked about in our workplaces, educational facilities and, well, everywhere. If we don’t talk about trauma, whatever pain and hurt that’s below the surface will remain. Through communication, we can better understand each other's pain and trauma and create a more accepting society.
So what’s my angle here? Such a vast topic, where to begin?
As I’ve stated in previous blogs, I lost most of my vision at the age of 14. I started high school that year and with the help of strong bifocal glasses, I could read regular print. By the end of the school year, I could not make out the letters - even large print. By the time I was 16, I had lost pretty much all of my functional vision. As I grew to understand what it means to live with sight loss, one catch phrase kept coming up repeatedly, “accepting blindness”. I have thought about this phrase over the years. What does it mean exactly? What does it mean to “accept” something that you don’t like or want to accept? Have I accepted it now? Am I at the right level of acceptance?
I can tell you now that I don’t believe in the concept of ‘accepted blindness’.
I had my sight and then lost it. Over the years, I have come to think about my loss of sight using the analogy of parenting. Like many of you, I’m a parent. One of the worst traumas in life, I can only imagine, is to lose a child. My point is that when you have something and then you lose it - the trauma doesn’t go away.
My eyesight was like that. It was a part of me and losing it, after I knew what it was like to see, was very difficult for me. I have not lost a child, but based on what I’ve heard and read, I can relate to how extremely tough this experience would be, especially at first. Absolutely heart-wrenching and full of grief. It may ease over time, but the trauma will likely never go away.
I think having your vision and then losing it is similar. The initial shock may ease up, but the trauma that has been triggered may never go away. In other words, my attitude towards my vision loss at any one time can also depend on what else is going on. For example, if things in life are going great, then my feeling towards my vision loss might be, "No problem. I've got this!". However, if I’m experiencing something else troubling, say a difficult relationship, big stress in the workplace, etc. these may trigger that same initial trauma around vision loss, and then, all of a sudden, there are two issues to deal with!
My blindness has not been something I dealt with, moved on from and was never a factor again in my life. Simply put, it’s always there. I really don’t feel it’s possible or realistic to think I could come to 100% accepting this situation. On the other hand, it’s not something I sit around moping about.
In mid-December I ran in the California International Marathon. I was very happy with my result in my second ever marathon, improving my time by nineteen minutes. For me, the incredible part of that weekend was the drive, ambition and strength of character, mind and body of all the athletes in attendance. That weekend was the US National Championships for blind and visually impaired marathon athletes. It was also a time trial for able-bodied athletes to be able to move on to Atlanta in February to try-out for the American Olympic marathon team. You can imagine the collective drive, determination, emotion, elation and shared devastation of many of the 7,000 athletes who were there.
I’m sure there were many athletes at the event who have experienced some level of trauma in their lives, both big and small; however, that did not hold them back.
One quote, I often think about when I seem to be going in circles and not getting anywhere is attributed, in 1907, to William L. Watkinson, but has also been made popular by Eleanor Roosevelt, Confucius, Oliver Wendell Holmes and John Kennedy:
“It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness”.
Blog By: Peter Field,
Edited by: Drew Skitt