This piece is a reflection on the author’s fable, The Aftermath’s Castle, featured in the fourth volume of Songs of Survival. If you’d like to read the fable and the rest of the journal, you can find it here: https://songsofsurvival.survivorstosuperheroes.org/
Trauma has a way of banishing us from the people, places, and things we once loved, especially if we have limited experience with hardship, sorrow, or torment. Moreover, the sense of powerlessness and injustice are often trauma’s greatest lasting injuries, and every untreated wound invites infection. Left to fester, infection can become all-consuming. Better to lance an infected wound and leave a scar than lose the limb altogether.
Though we need not silently suffer injustice, it is also useless to wage war on the past, as the first princess did. Indeed, revenge is a self-seeding poison that deprives us of healing’s peace and satisfaction. When we’ve been hurt, injured, devastated, the best revenge is personal growth independent of—yet also built upon—the wounds inflicted by others.
It is equally useless to neglect or burn the past, as the second princess did. Our lives are a story, and we cannot write our future without first transcribing the past. Telling the story enables ownership of the story; ownership returns power; and returned power fosters growth.
Recovery from trauma is fickle, as the third princess could tell you. Some days, the pain is distant, even hard to make out in the fog. Other days, the pain rips through us as if that moment had never ended. Traumatic memories may continue to call out to us, trying to draw us back in, much like how the parasitic tyrant tried to exploit the third princess. However, we can acknowledge and even converse with past trauma without being overwhelmed, consumed, or conquered. Our goal is not to vanquish trauma, but to grow beyond its reach and allow it to die the tyrant’s death—left withering, watching us thrive.
The queen’s observation from the spire is wise but challenging. Every castle does hold an aftermath, and every aftermath holds a castle. But better that the aftermath’s castle serve as a nexus for support and collective growth than a hub for war, silence, and suppression. Frustratingly, what doesn’t kill us does not automatically make us stronger. The adversity of trauma simply poses an unforeseen, invitation for growth, an obligatory appeal that leaves us to ponder: what type of castle will we build from the aftermath?
