Giving Compass' Take:

• The Aspen Institute profiles the work of Amanda Lindamood, a trauma survivor who has been a leader in sexual violence prevention and responses.

• What can we learn from Lindamood's experiences? One takeaway is to confront the fragmentation of trauma.

• Here's why treating childhood trauma should become a public policy priority.

If you work with people these days you confront trauma and the effects of trauma. Trauma, whether from abuse, sexual violence, racial injustice or other causes has a way of spreading outwards from an initial victim or group of victims to inflict collateral harm on friends and family, neighborhoods, and communities.

Amanda Lindamood, a trauma survivor herself, is deeply dissatisfied with what has been built to help people heal, and she wants to create something better. At 22, Lindamood found herself a department head at a major sexual violence prevention and response organization. Six years later, she is an emerging thought leader on the subject.

Amanda describes the fact that trauma isolates the survivor. People do not understand what you’ve gone through, or they can’t handle it, or they can’t hold it for long.  You quickly grow to view violence as rampant, invisible to the institutional and cultural structures of power that allow it to continue.

The isolating effects of trauma apply to communities as well as individuals. Many whole communities have been hit by historical trauma. The trauma has gone unacknowledged, yet must be dealt with before real relationship can exist anew.

Read the full article about healing self and society from trauma by April Lawson at The Aspen Institute.