Coping with Trauma

By Becky Lynn (Lapsley) Black
(BA 71)

Trauma. Anyone who has lived any
amount of time has had it. It is part of
Life. Those bursts of danger that stretch
us to the limit . . . the car accident, the moment a spouse walks out, the season when a parent walks through the horrors of drug addiction with a child, getting caught in the midst of a gun battle, hearing the thief enter the house in the dead of night, the rape, identity fraud, discovering a spouse is caught in pornography, getting a cancer diagnosis.

In my own life, there is scarcely a trip to
Ethiopia that doesn’t have its moments of
extreme stress. In our November-December ’08 trip, it was landing at RDU airport in a severe thunderstorm. I thought the plane was breaking apart with the wind gusts. An aborted landing (they call it “touch and go”) confirmed my suspicions about the seriousness of the situation. Now every time I board a plane, I “re-live” that stress.

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