When the Swallows Return

on collective trauma, shared narratives, and the healing power of community

“When our city was attacked, I fled to the hills with my little boy, and there my second baby was born,” she tells me, eyes like the sea behind her, hair long and blonde like mine. The lines etched into her face are deeper than mine. She is perhaps a decade older than me; perhaps less. She offers me a glass of wine.

“My husband had to be a soldier. He didn’t know where I was. He didn’t know he had another son.”

I’ve been in Dubrovnik, Croatia only minutes before this first tale of collective, existential trauma pours forth, as natural as the water, as hard as the rocky cliffs that wall the city to the sea. These things shape you, become a part of you. I think of her baby, born to conflict, born to a mother’s love. Both forces shaping his young life.

As we descend the ancient stone steps to find food at a simple restoran on the Adriatic shore – lattice hung with grapevines that drape down around pillars – I think of their stories. I watch the wine pour freely everywhere I look, and wonder how much is culture, how much is trauma and the nectar of forgetting. Perhaps it’s impossible to disentwine.

It’s been thirty years since the Serbian war ended. The people are divided by those who lived through it and those born in its wake; all impacted, though differently. So many must have lost brother, son, parent, child. Many are haunted with memories of having killed. When war is at home, there’s no division of veteran and civilian; not really.

Collective trauma shapes both individual and community, changing your internal reality as well as the fabric of culture and society in which you live and try to heal.

the Croatian coastline north of Dubrovnik

We see this when climate catastrophes devastate entire towns. When mass shootings terrorize whole communities. When cities burn and towns flood and earthquakes crumble buildings, shaking the very foundations of safety and connection.

Recovery from collective trauma is challenged by its very universality. When the support systems to which you might turn are similarly shaken, the safety net is torn. And yet there is a solidarity, too, that can counter the common trauma symptom of felt isolation.

In my research, I found several unique aspects of collective trauma. The scale of disaster or human-caused harm can shake survivors’ faith in their belief systems. This may lead to a deeper or matured spiritual understanding, but it can also cause existential crises, shattering belief systems that helped make sense of the world. When the world shakes, so do our frameworks of understanding.

Collective trauma changes social networks, too – not only because of those who are lost, but because we pull inside, feeling at once isolated, as though no one could understand, and afraid of further triggering fellow survivors’ trauma by talking about the horrific shared experience. Survivors fragment in self-comparison, measuring their own exposure, loss, and harm against that of their neighbors, too often judging self to be unworthy of the help others need. Where collective support and communal processing may help heal, too often the trauma itself repels from this essential balm.

Further complicating willingness to reach out for support is the ubiquitous sense of guilt and shame that survivors of mass trauma feel. Guilt over surviving, when so many did not. Guilt, sometimes, simply for being there or not being there in the heart of it. Guilt over feelings of relief. Guilt for not rescuing more victims. Or in cases of war, guilt for the killing it became their job to do, the faces of victims or enemy combatants etched indelibly in mind. Guilt and shame isolate, and when we let them, separate us from the healing potential of community.

Collective trauma takes up more space – not just psychologically, but physically. The places where the event or events happened, where rescue and recovery efforts were stationed, encompass more geography. This expands the area that serves as triggers, reducing the places where survivors feel safe. When the collective trauma happens in your own community, this further complicates healing, making it hard to find where to turn.

Collective trauma shapes communities, stories passed down within homes, in bars, in houses of worship, in the market square. The narratives we tell shape us and form our culture. They teach us who to hate, who to trust, who is in our tribe. The downstream impact of a moment in time creates waves of impact from generation to generation.

It can be helpful to recognize that not all trauma is the same, though all is valid. That there are unique aspects to what you’ve endured and survived. Recognizing the universality of some of your reactions can be a first, small step toward healing, toward pushing back against these effects. Perhaps it provides tacit permission to accept help. To find community in which to speak your dark truths, and so to share and lighten the load. To dare to believe that you are not bad, are not irrevocably damaged inside, are not truly alone, are still worthy to live and love and hope.

As I write this, gazing out between wisteria vines to the crystalline Adriatic sea, swallows calling and circling above, I hold two truths: This world is beautiful. And, this world is horrible. The juxtaposition aches in me daily.

Perhaps, as you read this, the latter truth has eclipsed the former in your life, due to dumb luck and place and time, or due to circumstances created by those outside of your control, inviting you to be a player in things darker than you imagined. I invite you to gently notice that both are still true. Your experience of horror is real, but it is not the full story of your life. Beauty may lie ahead if you allow yourself to see it, too. To notice the swallows: symbols of hope, freedom, resilience and new beginnings.

Having returned to their nests after arduous migrations, the swallows symbolize to the Croats hope, endurance, and the return of sons from war. A Serbian saying holds promise: Kad se lastavica vrati, dolazi novi život. “When the swallow returns, new life follows.”

May you gather these promises to your heart.

~ from my heart to yours,
Deborah