11/08/2025
This morning, my coffee grew cold beside me as I read; Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery in one hand, The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius and The Soul Also Keeps the Score stacked beside it.
Together, they form a dialogue between two worlds that are rarely brought into the same room: the psychology of trauma and the spirituality of restoration.
Last night, I was talking with my husband about my work. Some people carry stories so painful that they fear speaking them aloud, atrocities they’ve witnessed or even committed. Someone once told me they couldn’t understand how or why I do this work. As I spoke with him, I realized it isn’t simply what I do; it’s who I am. I recognize, in every story, a mirror of my own, a longing to be heard, to have one’s story received without judgment.
If I can be that place, that safe space where another can find their voice again, then that is sacred work. I’ve long said I have an agreement with Jesus, and I mean that. I sit with their pain, and then I carry it to Him. Anything less would crush my frail human frame; and anything more would be pride. I am not the healer. I am His conduit.
Herman writes that recovery is not just about remembering; it is about restoring connection, “from isolation to community.” McChesney takes that further, showing that trauma not only shatters the psyche but severs the soul’s sense of the sacred. Reading Ignatius through a trauma-informed lens, I’m reminded that peace comes not from fleeing pain but from transforming it through relationship with God, with self, and with others.
So here I sit in my favorite quiet Saturday morning ritual of prayer, reflection and reading, feeling what can only be described as a joyful heaviness.
My heart breaks for those I serve, yet it is filled with joy knowing that even in the ruins, there is the possibility of redemption. Healing begins when we dare to bring our story into the light, and when we hand it to the One who can bear it fully.
