Love & Joy can conquer Pain & Trauma
Written by Sarah Perlmeter
July 6, 2020
On February 1, 2011 my healthy 17-year old brother, Mitch, died tragically. As he got ready for one of his final days of his senior year in high school, his heart stopped and he collapsed in the shower. I was 20 years old and in my Junior year of college. Since then I’ve missed him. I’ve been unable to imagine the grief and trauma for my parents. I’ve spent a lot of time wondering where he’d be, and what our relationship would be. I imagine that he’d be living close by, and one of my best friends. For a long time the greatest impact this loss had on me was providing a perspective of just how fragile life is, and an understanding that love is stronger than death. Almost 10 years later, today, July 6, 2020 would have been his 27th birthday.
On July 1, 2019, my 28-year old sister-in-law, and one of my closest friends, Devra, was tragically killed in a bike accident in Bushwick. I’d known her for most of my life. Our parents are best friends, and only 11 days apart in age, we grew-up living in different cities. We spent time together through various travels that gave definition to the degree of our closeness throughout the years of our relationship. Over the last couple years of her life we grew the most close, remarking that “we were friends first,” as I began dating and ultimately marrying her older brother. On our wedding day, our families would never have thought that the thing that would end up tying us most closely together would be our experiences of trauma and loss of a child, a sibling, a best friend.
The past year has been complicated for me. I’ve worked to be present for my husband and his family. To share pieces of my experience when helpful, and to uncover more of my own in the process. I’ve been overwhelmed both by the loss of someone important to me, and by attempting to wrap my head around the fact that this had happened, again.
My work over the past several years has surrounded me with the realities of everyday trauma as experienced by the marginalized communities I work closely with. I’ve worked in Brownsville, Brooklyn, a neighborhood that is ~75% African American and ~20% LatinX, with the highest poverty level in NYC and lowest life expectancy. I now work with formerly incarcerated youth, a population of America’s Prison Industrial Complex with the highest recidivism rate, limiting their access to resources even more than that of a person of color without a history of injustice involvement.
I’ve unpacked the realities that while trauma and grief are universal, the intersectionality of my privileges have afforded me an ability to heal from and my process mine. I challenge power holders to reflect on their privileges, and support marginalized and criminalized communities in accessing resources and actualizing their self-determination. Both sides require unlearning — I believe in the potential for there to be spaces of healing accessible to everyone, and in fact that the historical trauma of oppression requires it. My commitment to anti-racism is rooted largely in making sure that love and joy can conquer pain and trauma.
