Counsellor and speaker Terry Garchinski, facilitated our most recent information gathering event. He believes that healing from systemic trauma must be undertaken on a community level.
“There has been so much hurt on a systemic level and it shows itself like an octopus with many tentacles.
I hear many people here in Fort Chip say, ‘I thought I was the only one experiencing this’.
No – the environment, the system, the oppression, the exposure to the trauma – it is a widespread, systemic thing.
And it’s very difficult for individuals to deal with that on their own.
On a community level, when people start to fill in the picture, they realize that the trauma affects them but it’s not their fault, they’re not responsible for it.
But people are responsible for their own healing. You can’t do it alone.
You can do it with your family, but that might be too small. Healing of this scale needs to be addressed on a community level.
That’s why community events, like the information gathering events in Fort Chip, are so important. It’s where people can begin to find answers.”
