16.08.2012

"We are bigger than our trauma and we are looking forward to become wounded-healers"

We, twelve women from six different countries, had the concluding session yesterday morning, after the morning devotion. We concluded it with a sharing of our “action plans“, which we have worked on the previous evening. This we wrote also for our own churches and countries, as our output from the many learning and insights we gained during this seminar-workshop which focused on Trauma-Healing.

After the sharing, we formally ended the leadership training with a closing liturgy, where each of the participants shared her personal insights collected during the training. Besides that, we shared our personal commitments, too, on what we could do and contribute towards the healing and wholeness, when we go back to our respective countries.

Some shared how this training helped them identify and deal with their own trauma, as well as with trauma of the church or community they are representing. We now know its symptoms and have learned how to respond to minimise the impact of this trauma. Furthermore, we realise that forgiveness is an important factor of one‘s healing process, besides the declaration that we are bigger than our traumas. Therefore, we need to declare our intention of wanting to be healed, so we can be a healer for others who are still hurting and suffering from brokenness; pain and loss; abuse and violence; life‘s hardships; and stresses of work and responsibilities.

We are treading now the road to healing and wholeness. The sessions of visual arts, theatre arts, and music therapy that were part of our course module have helped us in our own healing process. We thanked our facilitators who have shared their talents, skills and expertise in facilitating the specific topic they handled. Everyone of us wished to express how grateful we are to have been able to participate and be part of this seminar-workshop, where we were able to share our lives with other women from across the globe – Asia, Africa and Europe. We have shared our lives through the sharing of our cultures; our personal stories and experiences; personal and societal struggles and traumas (from our varied and different contexts), and through the joy we discovered, which is brought by the bright hope we saw as we journeyed towards our own healing and wholeness.

And today, the twelve women leave the Brokenshire Resort and Convention Centre in Davao City, Philippines, where we, from July 27 to August 15, 2012 have had the three-week seminar-workshop on “Gender, Culture, and Violence: Empowering Women through Healing and Wholeness“. Today these women head back to their respective homes in Rwanda, Cameroon, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Germany, and in some different islands in the Philippines. They go home as healed women who are looking forward to become wounded-healers for each of our families, churches, and communities.

We may have come from different cultures, backgrounds, and social status, but we share common visions and goals for the healed and healing communities. So, symbolically we light one of the three candles representing the three participating continents, after which each of us light our own small candles by taking light from the burning candle, and sing:

“It is better to light just one little candle, Than to stumble in the dark. Better far that you light just one little candle, All you need is a tiny spark.

If we all say a prayer that the world would be free, What a wonderful dawn of a new day we’ll see…" So if everyone lit just one little candle, what a bright world this would be.