You have to listen unflinchingly — not the performative kind of listening that glitters like cotton candy in social posts, but the kind where every word that hits your ears leaves a mark.
To be trauma-informed isn’t about checking a box or parroting back sanitized language. It’s about staring directly into the raw, bloody truth of human experience and not flinching. It’s about recognizing that every person you meet carries an invisible ledger of pain, carved into them by the ruthless hand of life. And sometimes, that pain comes out sideways—in anger, in apathy, in self-destruction.
Being trauma-informed means you don’t turn away from that. You don’t soften your gaze to make it more palatable. You don’t pretend it’s not happening. You see it for what it is: the messy, inconvenient residue of survival.
Don’t mistake this for indulgence. We don’t need to wrap people in wool. Being trauma-informed is about meeting people where they are while holding them accountable to where they need to go.
It requires a ruthlessness—not with others, but with yourself. Are you prepared to do that?
You’ve got to strip away your own assumptions, your gut reactions, that need for your own pat on the back. You’ve got to get comfortable wading knee-deep into the filth of someone else’s history, knowing you might not come out clean. You have to listen unflinchingly—not the performative kind of listening that glitters like cotton candy in social posts, but the kind where every word that hits your ears leaves a mark.
To be trauma-informed is to understand that the world is a brutal place, and people are doing whatever they can to survive it. But it’s also to know that survival isn’t enough—not for them, and not for you. If you’re going to help them rise, you’ve got to first help them see the chains they’ve been dragging. And sometimes, that means you have to hold a mirror to their face, even if they don’t want to look.
This isn’t charity. It’s work. Brutal, relentless, gut-wrenching work. And if you don’t have the stomach for it, then step aside. Because the leaders we allow to take the helm of the new world will be held accountable.
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