Week 4 · Lesson 1
The Work
Eight questions. What you write is read by your facilitator and nobody else. Not your officer, not your school, not your family, and not in any report. Three of these you do not write down at all.
Week 4 of 23 · Trauma and Violence Awareness
Nobody reads this one. How many people do you know who are not here anymore, and how many of them did you actually get to grieve?
Write one name. Not how they went. One thing about them that had nothing to do with how it ended.
You read every room and sit where you can see the door. What is that?
- A Something wrong with you.
- B A system your body built because it needed one, that does not know how to turn off.
- C Just being careful.
- D Something everybody does.
What is the hidden cost of going numb?
- A Nothing, it works, that is why people do it.
- B It turns the pain down and everything good with it.
- C It only affects you when you are alone.
- D It wears off by itself after a while.
Nobody reads this one. What do you use to keep the room quiet, and how long does it actually work before it wears off?
Something you saw or something that happened that nobody ever asked you about. Do not write the whole story. Write what you decided about the world that day, and whether you still believe it.
Jesus cried at a grave He was about to open. What does that teach?
- A That crying means you lack faith.
- B That God sits in grief with you instead of rushing you through it.
- C That grief only counts if the person stays gone.
- D That He did not know what was coming.
Nobody reads this one. In the garden He told His friends His soul was crushed, out loud, to somebody. Who is the one person you could say something true to, and what is stopping you?
Nothing you write here goes to your officer, your school or your family.
Defining Narratives · Week 4 Written work