This article is from the EMU News Archive. Current EMU new is available at www.emu.edu/news

Healing the Pain of Trauma

BOGOTÁ, Colombia — After decades of continuous armed conflict, millions of people in Colombia have suffered as direct victims of forced displacement, threats, massacres, kidnappings and diverse other forms of violence on a community and family level.

Colombian Christians, with funding from Mennonite Central Committee (MCC), are reaching out to bring the tools of trauma healing to bear not only on the violence in society but on the pressures on youth and adolescents and their family conflicts.

"When people do not have ways to digest this pain and transform it into a positive, motivating, life-giving force, it only generates more violence," said Bonnie Klassen, MCC representative in Colombia.

EMU’s Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience (STAR) program held its first workshop in Colombia in 2002 for 40 church leaders.

Since 2004, a joint effort of MCC, Colombian Mennonites and Anabaptist institutions has led to more than 150 people being trained in trauma healing methods. Participants then spread what they learn in their communities, some training other church leaders in trauma healing. In addition to bringing trainers to Colombia to meet with church leaders, some Colombian church leaders have attended STAR workshops in Harrisonburg, Va.

Breaking the Cycle of Violence

Gladys Cedeño was trained in trauma healing techniques through an MCC-supported program.
Photo by Melissa Engle

"Most Colombians are not even aware how much the traumatic events have impacted them until they finally arrive in a safe place where they can tell their story and process their life experiences, and then the tears start streaming down their face, " Klassen said. "This program seeks to help churches become these safe, healing communities for victims of violence, so we can break the cycles of violence."

Trauma healing in the midst of violence Gladys Cedeño, who is from a Gospel Missionary Union Church in Palmira, Colombia, attended a STAR workshop in 2003. She began working with trauma healing and a year later was invited to give a trauma healing workshop for members of indigenous churches.

By 2005, conflicts between armed groups began to deeply impact the families she was meeting with. She went into still-tense areas, sitting for hours and listening to horrific stories. She still remembers meeting with a mother and two children who were hidden in one room of a church, shaking with fear after a bomb had struck their home, which was located next to an army post. "They were just in shock," she recalls.

She began staying with families sometimes for hours, listening to their stories. "People are living in so much fear," she said.

And often, as people would share the recent horrors they faced, they would also begin telling Cedeño about horrors from the past. "As we work on this process, people just tear open. All their pain comes to the surface, not only of the moment but of the past as well," she said.

Finding Health and Healing

And her goal is to address not only the cost of the violence — but for people to find health and healing from whatever situations they face.

A key component is helping people find their own tools of resilience, guiding them to see how they've moved beyond painful situations in the past and how they can begin to share those tools with others, Cedeño said.

"The first thing for people is just to feel that there's somebody listening to them," Cedeño said. "Second, we're trying to bring together people and unite them as a community." In addition to her visits, she works to bring churches together, sometimes through events such as vigils or community meals.

Sometimes she visits individuals. At other times, she works with groups of 50 to 150. Now, she is trying to train more people, so the work can continue to expand.

This is a process of listening and sharing more than teaching. Walter Ceballos, who began work with trauma healing in Armenia, Colombia, after an earthquake, said people impacted by a tragedy are "the ones who show us and teach us more than we teach them. They're lived in these situations and they've found different ways to work through them."

Yet often, Cedeño said, in the midst of trying circumstances people may not be able to recognize the tools that they have and that they've been using. "It's not that they don't have these tools," she said. It is being able to recognize what they are.

Working with Families

Working with families Ceballos, a Mennonite pastor, works in Armenia, a region that had conflict years ago. Today he focuses on work with individuals and families, often in situations of family conflict or violence. "We're seeing a lot of cases of suicide in schools. Young people with family problems attempt to kill themselves," he said. "My dream is to be able to take our trauma work into schools."

Walter Ceballos is part of a trauma healing project supported by MCC.
Photo by Melissa Engle

In addition, he has trained 13 church leaders in Armenia to deal with conflicts and restoring relationships. "A church is a family. That means there's a lot of possibilities for tension or misunderstanding," Ceballos said.

In 1999, when an earthquake hit the region, Ceballos was asked by Mencoldes to work with people who were recovering. "It was responding to whole communities." He watched bit by bit as the city got repaired and as people began to reorder their lives.

Today, he finds himself helping people face myriad difficulties, whether job-related or family- related. "It's being with. It's being present. It's accompanying people," Ceballos said.

"We have to give a voice of hope," he said. "That voice is really important."

All of MCC’s partners in Colombia from the three Anabaptist groups work together in the Colombian Anabaptist Trauma Healing Committee, which accompanies churches in becoming healing communities.

This is a joint release of MCC and Eastern Mennonite University

— article by: Marla Pierson Lester; posted January 29, 2007