The Hidden and Generative Sacrifice of Leading Through Trauma
“There must be those among whom we can sit down and weep and still be counted as warriors.” —Adrienne Rich
Although you may not have been aware when you signed on, when you lead or work in a field where trauma is a routine part of the job, you are making a sacrifice. It may not have been an overt part of your contract, but you need to acknowledge this sacrifice as a real and important part of your job.
If you joined the military, you were aware that what you were signing up for might be the ultimate sacrifice of putting your life on the line to defend your country and its freedoms. And if you are a first responder, you may have been aware of the physical dangers and sacrifices, but you may have either underestimated the psychological sacrifice or minimized your experience because you feared that your responses might be viewed as pathological—rather than as a normalized result of trauma or vicarious trauma. But if you are like most people who work in fields where trauma is a routine part of the job, you may not have considered your job particularly ‘dangerous.’ You likely signed up because of your passion and purpose. And you wanted a chance to live that mission and purpose. But what we want you to understand is that this career path comes with an invisible set of sacrifices—sacrifices to be honored and supported.
Humans know they are mortal. We know, on some level, that we and everyone we know will someday die, but we mostly don't live with that fact weighing on us daily. Instead, we live with an illusion that it's not going to happen for a really long time which allows us to live in the present moment without a feeling of imminent fear or danger. Similarly, like most people, you may read the news and understand that bad things are happening to people. But most of the time, your experience is that these bad things aren’t happening to people you know and therefore you are able to keep the experience of trauma at a distance. But because of the work that you do, you don't have the luxury of that distance. You experience trauma directly, or you witness the trauma directly, or you treat the aftermath of trauma. You have no distance from the trauma. For you it’s not a newspaper headline or a social media post—trauma is how you spent your workday. It is what you are carrying with you as you head home and hug your loved ones.
The word sacrifice has at its root the word sacred, and sacrifice means: to offer up something sacred on behalf of another (or to ‘something bigger’). It is a generous act. It is a generative act. It is an act of devotion.
How would we define the sacrifice of leading or working through trauma? When you are exposed to trauma, you sacrifice an innocence or naivete about the world and yourself. An innocence or naivete that is a protective buffer for most people. When you work with, witness, or hear about trauma every day, you are asked to give up the illusion that bad things can’t happen and the illusion that you can prevent or stop bad things from happening. This acknowledgment sounds both simple and obvious, but it is neither.
If you work in spaces of trauma, you sacrifice part of your worldview and part of your inner experience to your work. You cannot unknow the hard and awful things that exist in the world and you cannot unknow your own fragility and powerlessness in the face of such tragedy and despair.
There is a myth that if trauma affects you, it means you are weak. (Rather than normalizing the predictable physiological and psychological responses to trauma). This myth may make you reluctant to acknowledge the sacrifice because you don't want to admit the weight of the work. And your employer may not want to admit the sacrifice because they are unsure of how to compensate people for the sacrifice in addition to the other aspects of the job. But honoring and holding the sacrifice is a necessary part of your work. This is what will help you stay whole. This is what will help you take care of yourself. Acknowledging the sacrifice is what will allow you to stay in your job as long as you want.
If you can own the sacrifice—then you also get to own your status as a warrior or healer or elder. You get to own your hard-won wisdom and compassion that you gain through your contact with trauma. You get to own your grit and strength. But for you to own the sacrifice, you must grieve the loss of your innocence and the loss of your wish to be powerful enough to change or stop trauma the way you wish you could. You need to share your experience of sacrifice with the people on your team—and with your loved ones. And by owning and sharing your sacrifices, you can come to experience and feel yourself as a part of humanity in all its complexities across time and place. You are connected to all of the people who have held tragedy and despair in history, and who are holding it now. You get to belong to those, as the poet Adrienne Rich says, “among whom we can sit down and weep . . . and still be counted as warriors.”
© 2024 Gretchen L Schmelzer, PhD | Center for Trauma and Leadership