Why lean into trauma? Ni une más.

One hundred years ago, a beautiful soul was born.

This soul was not immune to sadness, but still chose joy.

This soul was not immune to pain, but still chose grace.

This soul was not immune to loneliness, but still chose love.

Pamela in a Tree talk of "Ni une más"

July 21, 1925 was the birthdate of my dear friend, Lew Towler. Lew served as a Seabee in World War II. When he returned home, he spent his $200 honorary discharge money on a ticket to the Chicago Lyric Opera, and had enough money left over to buy a new suit to wear to the opera. Lew knew that beauty was a necessary antidote to suffering, and to him, there was no greater beauty than music. Throughout his life, he continued to play the piano and sing hymns with genuine spirit and joy.

When Lew was in his 80s, he contacted me and asked if I would give him organ lessons. We agreed that we’d meet for lessons on Mondays at 11, followed by lunch at a fresh catch seafood restaurant nearby (Lew loved oysters). At the end of each lesson, he’d choose a hymn that we’d play and sing together–such connection and joy! Over lunch, he’d tell me incredible stories of his many life experiences–how when he was a University of Michigan student post-WWII, he led student efforts to send weekly food parcels to people in various parts of war-torn Europe.

We fell into an easy and trusting friendship, and soon started sharing stories of suffering and pain alongside our stories of love and humor. It was a rare gift to have a deep friendship with someone who always listened intently to my stories and always believed in me, who felt my suffering and joy inside himself, and told me I deserve to be treated with genuine love and respect. We celebrated his birthdays together with his three wonderful daughters and a few other friends. He celebrated my travels and performances, my roles as musician, professor, parent, and friend.

Mondays with Lew left me feeling uplifted–like I could make it in the world because someone like Lew believed in me and loved me, without judgment. He helped me to believe in myself. The last birthday we got to celebrate together was his 98th. He talked about making it to his 100th birthday, which would have been today. In remembering Lew, I also think about what a beautiful friendship and supportive community I would have missed out on, had we not dared to be vulnerable and talk about difficult topics as well as joys in our lives. In fact, the joys were so much richer and more genuine because they eased the suffering we both knew and named.

At Healing Bells, we’re often asked why we lean into trauma. Isn’t it difficult? Why not take on something lighter? The answer is yes, it’s difficult, but what’s soul-crushing is to remain silent.

As we learned from Audre Lorde and Sara Ahmed last week, silence is complicity.

Complicity risks hurting people rather than helping them. As I learned from Lew, believing people and their stories of trauma is an essential step toward breaking the cycle of suffering.

Over the past five years at Healing Bells, we’ve leaned into, listened to, and believed survivors’ stories of sexual, domestic, and gender-based violence and femicide. We experienced the great honor of entering a sacred space with them–sacred because the most vulnerable space in our stories is precisely the space where healing can begin. Survivors believe and understand other survivors in ways that no one else can. Within a supportive community, we can stand up to these injustices together.

"Ni une más" collage. Credit: Yurani Cubillos

Our community of survivors chose to collaborate with artists to co-tell their stories through music, theatre, dance, and poetry in a trailblazing musical we co-created: Ni une más (Not one more). Something miraculous can happen when survivors connect, as we sang in one of the Ni une más choruses:

“When survivors listen to survivors, we know we’re not alone.

When survivors understand survivors, it feels like comin’ home.

To a home where there’s no drama, old trauma can release.

To a home that we can count on to give us love and peace.”

- ©CHI Press, 2024.

Like Lew’s yearning to go to the opera after what he saw in World War II, our Ni une más production helped us to transform the pain in our stories into beauty expressed through music, theatre, and dance. Through the arts engagement, we built a supportive community, worked through stages of healing from trauma, and learned to value and care for ourselves. For trauma survivors, that healing pathway can prevent significant future health issues and build more relational, work, and financial stability.

Is leaning into trauma hard work? Absolutely! The most deeply meaningful aspects of life are sheer hard work: building skills as an artist or athlete, teacher, office manager, nurse, social worker, engineer, food service worker, or attorney; fostering healthy relationships, staying physically active, naming issues and addressing them. Yet, facing deep challenges together forges much deeper friendships than keeping everything at a surface level.

A grave misconception exists that talking about trauma is negative. The fact is, talking about trauma is necessary to find a healing pathway. However, pretending trauma doesn’t exist is a most negative, isolating, and dehumanizing choice. Denial makes the trauma worse. Facing the trauma within a supportive community and with the healing empowerment of arts engagement is incredibly uplifting and genuine.

Our Ni une más team decided that no matter how many times we’ve been silenced and shunned, we’re going to build a supportive community of people who dare to lean into trauma, speak out, and therefore, dare to be vulnerable and heal. Together, we keep fighting forward to create a world in which others don’t suffer these same injustices.

Our answer to the question “Why lean into trauma?”

We simply can’t not address the world’s injustices.

We can’t remain silent.

Too much is at stake.

And we’d never know the joys of deep genuine friendships like mine and Lew’s, supportive communities like our Ni une más team, or the transformative power of the arts to uplift us, offering beauty and healing.

Sufi mystic and poet Rumi (1207–1273) wrote a dialogue that sums up why we at Healing Bells lean into difficult topics.

“I said: What about my eyes?

He said: Keep them on the road.

I said: What about my passion?

He said: Keep it burning.

I said: What about my heart?

He said: Tell me what you hold inside it.

I said: Pain and sorrow.

He said: Stay with it. The wound is the place where the light enters you.”

Without leaning into social issues of suffering, we might avoid seeing the world’s wounds. But the cost of that avoidance is cavernous: the suffering will only grow, and we’d miss out on seeing and feeling the light seep into our synapses, ready to connect and heal us.

In next week’s blog, our beautiful, organic social media designer Yurani Cubillos will tell us about how she found light amidst grief by inviting a community to share pockets of joy.