Volume 6 • Issue 3 • April 2021
Uplift Family Services is a trauma-informed agency, providing whole person care through resilience-oriented, data-driven, culturally sensitive services. We believe in the power of staff investment, advocacy and collaboration as we partner with individuals, families, and communities to heal from the widespread impact of trauma.
Resolved
The U.S. is finally making real progress on the pandemic timeline. Barring an unforeseen viral variant or other circumstance that prolongs the journey, we may have reached the “End of the Middle.” Let’s hope less privileged countries get there soon.
Following the challenges and losses of the past year, most folks will bounce back. Yes, they will be changed, but their psychological, physical, social, and spiritual capabilities will be intact, in some cases even strengthened. Other folks have suffered trauma: recovery will take time and may never be complete.
Stress is hard, trauma is worse, and in a pandemic both are unavoidable. Let’s at least learn from it.
Making the Most of the Experience
Partly because they’ve been so painful, the past 13 months qualify as lived experience – something we at Uplift recognize as a valuable asset. You will this will come through this experience differently than someone in the future who learns about it in books.
We owe it to ourselves and one another to take this step. To reflect alone and together. To decide what we want to become. To make this an opportunity for growth.
Everyone has good intentions, some big, some small. A year ago, the United Nations General Assembly went for it all, passing a resolution for global solidarity to fight the coronavirus. Meanwhile, according to Business Wire, 56% of Americans have been taking better care of their skin. Yes, some improvements are literally skin deep. On a more substantive note, the same survey showed many Americans have been exercising more and eating better. Will it stick?
For a while, as manufacturing and automobiles idled, air pollution actually improved and other animal species recovered a bit of lost territory from Homo sapiens. If that isn’t a sign of hope and possibility for climate change, I don’t know what is. But will we build on what we have witnessed?
By definition, trauma means losing control of your destiny, at least for a while. Now there’s a lesson: no one fully controls their destiny. But we all have some say in it.
For ideas about how to make resolutions that last, check out The Atlantic, Psychology Today, Harvard, or Forbes.
Editors: Mark Edelstein & Elika Beckwith
