The Trauma-Informed Communities: Overview-Part 1

The trauma-informed communities I’ll be visiting over the next 3 weeks are:

• Portland, OR
• The Dalles, OR
• Columbia River Gorge, OR
• Walla Walla, WA
• Coeur D’Alene, ID
• Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Here are a few overview tidbits about the Oregon and Washington communities. I’ll post brief overviews about Coeur D’Alene and Calgary later this week, then once I’ve met with the various people in each place, I’ll post separate detailed updates about each community.

Portland, OR: Portland State University is serving as the lead agency for “Trauma-Informed Oregon”, a  statewide collaboration to promote and sustain trauma-informed care across child- and family-serving systems. They started in 2014 and expanded in 2015 to include adult-serving behavioral health systems. Portland State serves as a centralized source of information and resources and coordinates and provides training for healthcare and related systems. They work with state agencies, state and local providers, communities, family and youth organizations, and diverse constituents to bring many voices and perspectives to the table to learn from one another and to advocate for informed policies and practices to promote healing and support well-being for all of Oregon’s children, adults, and families.

The Dalles, OR: Their efforts started in 2008 with a 5-year SAMHSA Safe Schools/Healthy Students grant. The grant specified that law enforcement, mental health, juvenile justice and education agencies work together to make schools safer and students healthier.   This city of 13,000 is the first in the nation to seek certification from the Sanctuary Institute— (created by Sandra Bloom at Drexel University), a model of organizational change that challenges every part of the community to examine and remake itself through an understanding of trauma..

Columbia River Gorge, OR: The Multnomah County Department of Community Justice is incorporating a trauma-informed approach into their juvenile & adult criminal justice and reentry systems. While I’m visiting them, I’ll be attending a day-long forum on trauma-informed criminal justice that happened to be scheduled for the same timeframe as my visit!

Walla Walla, WA: Their “Trauma-informed community” effort started in 2008 when local non-profit executive Teri Barila attended a conference where she learned about ACEs. She came back to Walla Walla & organized a community meeting in early 2008 and brought Dr Robert Anda in for a two-and-a-half-hour seminar.  165 people came. Walla Walla is featured in the documentaries “Paper Tigers” and “Resilience”. Walla Walla has a population of 32,000 people. They have 3 colleges, yet one out of four of their children live in poverty, 65% of its residents have not attended college, and gangs and drugs are common.

Again, these are a few initial bits of info. Much more to come! Stay tuned!

Brokenness, Judgment, Compassion, and Kinship

One of my heroes, Father Greg Boyle, of Homeboy Industries has said, “The true measure of our compassion lies not in our service to people on the margins, but in our willingness to see ourselves in kinship with them.” This requires a deep understanding and acceptance of our own brokenness or, as one of Father Greg’s “homies,” former gang member Jose, says, ““How can I help the wounded if I don’t welcome my own wounds?”

My work as Director of the RMO for Returning Citizens is with people who have been wounded in countless ways, by poverty, addiction, mental illness, incarceration, trauma. They are demonized and marginalized by the rest of society. For longer than I’d like to admit, I’ve been operating under the delusion that to serve them effectively, I need to be a pillar of strength and model of someone who has things pretty well figured out.

The core messages of my childhood were: “What’s done is done. No point rehashing the past. Get over it and move on.” “Don’t air your dirty laundry.” “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.”  

These messages have steeped me in what Brene Brown calls the “myth of self sufficiency.” In “The Gifts of Imperfection”, she writes, “It’s as if we’ve divided the world into ‘those who offer help’ and ‘those who need help.’ The truth is that we are both . . . Until we can receive with an open heart, we’re never really giving with an open heart. When we attach judgment to receiving help, we knowingly or unknowingly attach judgment to giving help.”

I’ve finally come to understand that in my work, I often attach judgment to “helping” people coming out of prison because I have NOT come to a full understanding of my own brokenness and my own need for help.

When I first heard Brene Brown’s TED talks on vulnerability and shame, I identified deeply with her admitted perfectionism and belief in self-sufficiency, her desire to plan, control and avoid vulnerability (aka “weakness”). But when she said her research shows that vulnerability is essential to creativity, joy and authentic connection and that being vulnerable is our most accurate measure of courage, it was a sobering wake-up call for me.

So last summer, I applied for, and was blessed and grateful to receive, a Baldwin Fellowship from the Lancaster County Community Foundation. As part of my Baldwin project, since September, I have been delving deeply into childhood trauma and how it affects connection, health, and mental health.

I’m now preparing for the next major phase of my Baldwin project: a trip to Oregon, Washington and Alberta, Canada, to visit several trauma-informed communities to develop a deeper understanding of how a broad-based, cross-sector “Trauma-Informed Community” approach could fundamentally change our schools, healthcare, community-benefit organizations, justice system, and entire community.

I hope the insights from the trauma-informed communities I visit may help us move toward becoming a trauma-informed community here in Lancaster – a place of true compassion and kinship.

As I prepare for this trip, and throughout my travels, I will be posting updates about what I’m learning along the way – about trauma, brokenness, judgment, compassion, and kinship. So, stay tuned…