WRITING

How "the arts" are showing up in the world to express, heal and educate around traumatic events

Judith Prest

Trauma happens to individuals, families, communities, and nations. Healing from trauma expands outward from the privacy of the studio or the therapist's office into the street, the community, the world. The traumatic effects of war reach far beyond the individual psyches of those who were in the war zone. Natural and man-made disasters send trauma-waves out through families, communities, across state lines and national borders. Rape and sexual abuse affect individual survivors, their families, friends and communities. Healing from trauma is both an individual and collective journey. The arts and expressive art therapy can help on all levels.

In the case of "man-made" trauma, there are issues of reconciliation and "restorative justice" to be addressed. These issues are interwoven with and can have impact on the individual, "private" healing work of trauma survivors. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall is a good example of how all this comes together via a public work of art. Visiting the wall is a dark journey, down and through, much like a healing journey. The memorial provides a shrine, a gathering place, a tangible and real place for ritual and for honoring not only the dead but those who came back soul-injured. Visiting the wall is not an art-making experience, but the wall stands as testimony of the power of a work of art to evoke the war experience and has been a backdrop to numerous planned and spontaneous rituals of healing and reconciliation for veterans and survivors of Vietnam.

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