How we think, feel and experience the world in survival mode is not the same as we think, feel and experience it when safe. Even if we know this intellectually we might not know or remember how this feels.
I saw this video of Wentworth Miller on my friend's timeline. I guess he's a tv star but that didn't matter to me. It was his words that captured my attention. He talks about growing up in survival mode as a child. It's not just that he shared his own story but how he connects his own story to community building. He explains why it's impossible, in survival mode, to feel community.
"You only cry for help if you believe there's help to cry for," he said."
Some of us can relate to his story personally and some of us can't. But the fact that we all care is what I think is the special glue that makes this community special and powerful. We are working to create the world that feels more "we" and "us" for all. Sometimes that is by sharing stories and sometimes by sharing studies.
He shares his own story, insights, and experiences but not just to be known or seen personally but to build a better world. He speaks for others as well, who are busy surviving. And he reminds me of what we often forget. Not everyone does survive. He made it but he might not have. Survival mode isn't just a saying. It's real. It's a fight for life that is not always won.
He speaks of hope as well and using his story to help others.
"I thought, let me be the someone else what no one was to me."
This is what so many of us do in our varied ways right here, every day, in posts, discussion topics, and sharing. Sometimes people ask what more can we do with ACEs science, for healing and helping people in pain or agony or crisis. This figuring it out together, this being able to think and talk and share openly and as equals, this is doing. This does matter. This is essential.
This figuring it out together, this being able to think and talk and share openly and as equals, this is doing. This does matter. This is essential. This having a community where there is an us is a part of how healing happens if it's something we have had too little of as children or adults.
Here's the link to the Us and We video.
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