Erik Gleibermann, former Survivors International Board Member, writes for Tikkun Magazine.
Gleibermann's article, "Mending a Torn Psychic Fabric: Torture and Tikkun Olam" highlights the strength and healing capacity of survivors of torture and the importance for ourselves and our world to support that healing. Gleibermann quotes Dr. Uwe Jacobs, Director of Survivors International, who says, "The key is that somebody who cares is there to listen to what has happened. The survivor does not have to fear being retraumatized by being misunderstood.” Survivors of torture have many varied ways of representing and healing their trauma, it is our job to listen. From the article we learn that listening well may mean hearing detailed accounts of the torture, it may mean hearing and witnessing a survivor's political analysis of the events leading to his/her torture, it may mean creating spaces for people to come together and create, it may mean giving resources so that survivors of torture have the economic and political safety to start their healing process. It is important that we all participate, as Gleibermann concludes, "As interconnected members of a global community, each of us, whether consciously or not, inevitably absorbs some level of the widespread trauma of torture. The direct survivors have been the ones conspicuously afflicted, but they carry the trauma of our entire society. And so their mending repairs the wider world."
Read entire Tikkun article
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