Here I go again. I want to talk about posttraumatic growth.

We have the common phrase “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” Which is, by and large, crap. But the kernel of truth is that there is such a thing as growth that springs forth from adversity.

Posttraumatic growth describes the increased insight, knowledge, wisdom, that some experience following trauma. It speaks to the learning sometimes available through coping with and surviving through an immense challenge. Since under capitalism we think everything has to be productive, including trauma, we describe it through the lens of gains in functioning. I prefer to think of it in terms of healing.

Surviving trauma calls upon our strengths, our gifts, our ingenuity, our resilience, whatever we have to bring to bear. We feel we cannot make it through, and yet minute by minute, we are still here. Slowly (or quickly) the experience changes, shifts, lifts, and we find that in addition to whatever wounds now need tending, whatever needs need meeting, we have developed some capacity — or come to trust that which was already there, which carried us through.

Surviving traumatic experience can inspire art; deepen relationships; lead to greater empathy for others’ suffering and call us to help. Sometimes the wounds and the gifts can be of a piece. For example, trauma can make one vigilant towards — and therefore imbue keen radar for — anything resembling that experience in the future. These abilities can be profound, as well as profoundly burdensome.

Sometimes, the paradigm shift of posttraumatic growth even lends itself towards healing older or long forgotten pains, both stirring things up terribly and then, providing a place for them to finally land that feels more settled and affords more freedom than before.

In my (not that humble) opinion, the mistake so often made in our toxically positive culture is locating the growth in the trauma, and not in the person. The trauma did not help. The trauma did not gift those learnings. The survival did. The coping did. The person themselves, and their community of care, did. Trauma itself does not contain the capacity for growth and healing: we do!

We are going through an immense challenge right now. A trauma. Simultaneously we see heartwarming stories of the environment recovering, of people coming together in mutual aid, of systemic shifts towards caring for our own and lending support the world over. Of art and comedy and tragic comedy and music and messages of comfort and solidarity. We see so, so many bringing forth what they have to offer.

Let us be careful: the pandemic itself will never have been good. No growth can make up for the immense suffering caused by what we are going through now. What is gained never replaces what is lost, never lessens the grief. We need not be grateful towards the pandemic for a single fucking thing. The pandemic did not bring us these gains.

These beautiful gifts come from us. Our survival, our coping, our will to live and to be in community with each other. We are, and will be, living in a traumatized world. But also, in a resilient world. Pandemics don't come factory-made with silver linings: we create them. If we hold that these incredible capacities are in us, in humanity, we can trust ourselves and what we learn through this time — what we see we are capable of — and heal so much more than what is breaking now.