Trauma-informed care is currently trending on every buzzword list you can think of. If you’re not trauma-informed, you’re not with the times. But what does this actually mean? Often, we say we are “trauma-informed” but does this really permeate into our practice? Our lives?

The reality stands that for too many people, faith communities are not places of safety and refuge. Rather, they are sources of ongoing harm. Among others, this is increasingly clear for women in conservative spaces, LGBTQIA+ people, and children who are vulnerable to abuse.

This piece, published in The Conversation, sheds light on new research about religious trauma, minority stress, and the experiences of LGBTQIA+ people in conservative religious settings.

It’s the imposter syndrome of adverse experiences, and we hear it on repeat. “My experience isn’t bad enough to be called trauma,” they say. “Other people have it worse, and really mine isn’t even that traumatic.” For many people, the label “trauma” doesn’t seem to fit because they haven’t lived through a situation they (or rather, society) deems extreme enough. They may be showing all the classic symptoms of trauma, and yet they can’t approach that word, because in their minds, it’s reserved for something far worse.

Sometimes I feel like I’m torn between two worlds.

At other times, I am torn between two armies.

On the one hand, I am a part of the church - gloriously following the way of Jesus in the mundane messiness of this world.

But on the other hand, I belong to the gay community - miles away from my home in the church and violently opposed to its very existence.

"I just can't seem to think clearly," "I feel tired all the time," and "I just don't have the capacity I used to have."

As we enter 2022, a lot of people are describing themselves as "burned out". Tired, drained and hoping for a better tomorrow, we are collectively searching for language to capture the way our bodies are responding to the steady drum of turbulence.

For me though, "burn out" feels like the wrong diagnosis. It just doesn't sit right. Instead, I'm sitting in the land of "trauma" and I want to suggest that for almost all of us, this is a much more helpful term.

I’ve lost track of the number of times that people have asked me why I follow Jesus, especially considering the fact that so many LGBTQIA+ people like me have abandoned (and been abandoned by) his church. Some days, I honestly don’t know if I do still follow Jesus. Some days, the absurdity of the incarnation just doesn’t sit well with me, and the veil between here and Heaven feels all too impassable.

History has landed us in a time and place where people of sexual minorities and diverse genders are all around us, and we have the profound opportunity to live with them, learn from them and journey through life with them. One thing is for sure. They (and by that I mean we) are not going anywhere. The church is scrambling for answers, and the ones they are so often producing just don’t have the theological rigour to be satisfying. The onus in the end is on people like you and me, informing ourselves and preparing ourselves to love well as we keep pointing one another to Jesus. 

This is the post where I tell you a bit about what I’ll be posting about on this blog