About Scarsongs
Our vision is to create a reader about trauma and resilience that matters to people. A book that inspires, lives close to us, offers stories we can relate to and gathers insights and resources. A collection of voices that helps us orient our struggles in a bigger picture and brings people into connection and conversation.
Trauma has been defined in multiple ways from single life-shattering events to chronic violations. We understand trauma as experiences so threatening that we felt a profound sense of powerlessness and loss of control. Trauma can occur in a variety of contexts ranging from bullying in school to racial violence, from child abuse to systemic oppression, from police brutality to domestic assault. Trauma devastates and interrupts. These experiences leave scars that linger, and impact our feelings of safety and connection to self and others. They influence our identity, how we act, feel, think and relate. Healing means moving out of contracted fear back into aliveness. It means engaging with the complicated, beautiful, terrifying process of becoming whole, and sharing what we are learning along the way.
The reason we started this project is because this is a book we have been missing in our own processes, and because we think there is a need in our circles to take trauma out of taboo, silence and isolation into a shared space where we can talk about it, help each other and continue healing. We believe strongly in the importance of discussing trauma as it exists in a social and political context, and of investigating the ways that dealing with trauma impacts our abilities to organize, create, take action, and live the lives we want to be living.
Scarsongs is a project that aims to bring more grassroots approaches into the conversation around trauma, resilience and mutual support. It is a collaboration of people involved in The Icarus Project, Activist Trauma Support and the Bay Area Radical Mental Health Collective, and links trauma related grassroots work in North America and Europe.
This collection will include both submitted work and commissioned pieces in order to create a meaningful document and vital resource. This book will be alive and reflect a diversity of experiences and means of expression, including essays, art, poetry, articles, interviews, and music.
We plan to include content in the following areas:
· Trauma – Introduction
· Personal stories of Trauma and Healing
· Mutual Support – Individual, Community and Movement Scale
· Systemic Trauma - Situating Trauma in a Socio-Political Context
· Trauma and our Activism
· Trauma and our Bodies
· Skillsharing and Strategies
· Vision – Analysis, Perspective and Moving forward
· Bibliography, Resources and Infomaterial
About Us
This project is a collaboration between members of The Icarus Project, Activist Trauma Support, and the Bay Area Radical Mental Health Collective. It is being edited by Gesine Wenzel and Ashley McNamara, with the support of many others.
Check out our Ten Good Reasons why Trauma Matters in Political Activism.
