🔘 Grief, Trauma, and Ritual — Part Five (5) and Final
What Can Be Done with Collective Grief and Trauma?
Aydin Areta

We must heal the wound of our having been broken by “becoming us.” Collective trauma can be healed only through collective action and gains meaning through collective creation. This is precisely why, after the solidarity of millions of Iranians across the world, hope and warmth returned to the hearts of millions of Iranians inside and outside the country. This solidarity is, in this account, the greatest treatment for trauma. This becoming “we” is the path through which our collective grief can acquire meaning.

Along this path we learn how to make alchemy from anger, fear, and numbness. Alchemy means creating a vessel for suffering, not repressing suffering. For if suffering is released without consciousness, it leaves behind nothing but a destructive unconsciousness.

When a society becomes passive and isolated after a wound, the path to healing lies in creating small and large experiences of civic participation—acts that bring society closer together and create “us” again. Do not think these acts are insignificant: study groups, small collective projects, rebuilding public spaces, cultural campaigns, volunteer activities. Wherever you see a small action connecting people to one another, that is “us” repairing ourselves and trying to transform the wound into meaning.

No collective wound without meaning is healed. We must write our own narrative: what needs to change, and what have we learned from this path?