PBS NewsHour: Invisible Scars Series starts this week

Invisible Scars is a PBS NewsHour series about childhood trauma and healing that starts this Monday, Dec. 14th, and goes through Thurs., Dec. 17th. I was interviewed on camera and for background for many, many, many hours. We shall see if, what, and how much airs or make it into the broadcast. Still, it was an honor to be asked to participate, and that a trauma survivor perspective is included.

How we live with and heal from trauma is critical and important expertise. And I use the word expertise intentionally. I don’t like the “lived experience” terminology because it minimizes the real expertise of managing, for decades, trauma symptoms from developmental trauma which traditional medicine has basically failed to do.

It shouldn’t be minimized as “lived experience” unless we want to call the academic understanding of trauma “learned experience” or “learned expertise” as though what one learns from a book is more important than what one learns from life.

Nope.

Survivors are not only truth-telling but finding innovative, affordable, and community-oriented ways to support ourselves and others and we were doing so long before the traditional trauma community understood that talk therapy was actually not the most effective for trauma. We were not heard or listened to. Now, what survivors have been saying for decades is finally being said even among well-known leaders in the field but we can’t forget that this knowledge was hard-won, dismissed initially, and fought for mostly by survivors, feminists, and community members and leaders who did listen to and represent the interests of survivors of trauma.

So, I’m glad this topic is being discussed by my favorite news program and it’s not just highly educated and well-known white men talking about these topics. After all, childhood trauma disproportionately impacts communities of color, indigenous people, the LGBTQI community, people with disabilities, and females. So, I’m glad those speaking to and about ACEs and childhood trauma are representing ourselves and our communities.

It will be interesting to see who and what is covered, and how.


I know I’ll be tuning in and Tweeting and blogging comments all week long. Maybe you will as well.

This is the copy of the promo that was on twitter:

PBS NewsHour@NewsHour·Dec 11MONDAY: In a country upended by the coronavirus pandemic, we begin our series that takes a closer look at a growing, silent epidemic — childhood trauma.

Online at 6 p.m. ET on our site: http://pbs.org/newshour

On your local PBS station: http://to.pbs.org/1XWBoZl