The surface-self, left for so long in undisputed possession of the conscious field, has grown strong, and cemented itself like a limpet to the rock of the obvious; gladly exchanging freedom for apparent security, and building up, from a selection amongst the more concrete elements offered it by the rich stream of life, a defensive shell of “fixed ideas.” It is useless to speak kindly to the limpet. You must detach it by main force. That old comfortable clinging life, protected by its hard shell from the living waters of the sea, must now come to an end. -Evelyn Underhill
I have learned to kiss the wave that throws me against the Rock of Ages. -Charles Spurgeon
A few years ago, when Twitter was beginning its wobbly transformation to X, a Facebook friend posted that they didn’t care whether the whole site became obsolete altogether. I replied, “Tell me you’re not disabled without telling me you’re not disabled” — both an accurate statement and a condescending one. It was born of years of education provided to me by autistic people on social media who discussed their disability status online and in so doing gave me posts to share with my son, who ten times out of ten said he related to them. So the idea of throwing the baby out with the bathwater was an affront to me; Twitter may have been a dumpster fire of negativity for some, but for us and many others it was a lifeline.
In the years since, I’ve inhabited social media platforms to learn from the lived experiences of marginalized communities, especially neurodivergent ones, not just for personal resources but professional ones, as my son’s autism sparked a career change for me: a jump from the pediatric dentistry I practiced as an American to the functional linguistics I’m studying as an Australian. James’s neurotype has given me key-code entry to a door I never would have approached by choice, and this door has opened into an entire universe I never would have known without him — a universe that was always there even before I began to personally bear witness to its heartaches and wonders.
While access to this universe has humbled me in regard to my prior ignorance, it has often, also, left me angry. Sometimes I don’t always extend the amount of grace I should to those on the other side of the door, to those bound by everything from simple unawareness to orchestrated ridicule of the experiences of others. I remember when the tables I sat at only had room for people like me, and I remember how that smallness made me feel safe, and when I realized how misplaced that safety was. Those memories and realization should, and can, make room for empathy. But I’m also frustrated at people for not being better than I ever used to be. For remaining at those tables after I left them. I forget that my story has a before and after (and often a still), and I’m impatient for everyone else to hasten those same demarcations in their own lives — to start giving a damn about the people and things I now do.
I’m currently reading a novel that has introduced me to the term understory, which is defined as the layer of a forest beneath the upper canopy, consisting of saplings, shrubs, ferns, and mosses. This layer is thick, unruly, unpredictable, and often unseen or disregarded. All of which makes me think that perhaps the key code I have doesn’t provide lateral access to a new universe, or elevation to some upper-level understanding, but has actually plunged me into a deeper way of living than I did before, a place where I’m constantly, and often painfully, crashing into grace. As the Psalmist writes, “deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.”
I am learning this understory, this layer beneath the towering trees, by heart. Without as much light here as in the canopy above, I am learning to feel my way through. Within these depths, I find pain and joy rivaling each other and coalescing into something more profound than either could be alone. I am greeted with stories of my son’s exclusion from groups in PE, followed up by tales from friends of how he’s changed their lives. I find that his attention to detail can leave me screaming internally about how late we’re going to be to school, even as I recognize that it is causing me to see the world in such a way, broken down to its elements, as to literally make me wiser and more understanding. In this universe, I know some things I didn’t before, but more importantly, I care more than I ever have, about people I often never noticed.
Here in the understory I am learning to love by paying attention (Simone Weil wrote about attention as a component of generosity, prayer, and love). And when I do start paying attention, I recognize that all the trauma in the world right now, all the injustice, is not new — we’re just more privy to it thanks to the ubiquity of news updates. My son’s brain, which is wired in such a way as to experience much of life through survival mode in a world not built for him, reflects the trauma experienced by so many communities throughout history, and I never noticed this before. His story was my key code, and using it — opting into that pain by bearing witness to an experience other than my own — is what Jemar Tisby calls “stand[ing] in such solidarity with the oppressed that the blows that they receive, you also start to receive.”
Maybe the trauma that many of us are witnessing and feeling now should awaken us to what others have always known. People who already inhabited the understory — who have only known its universe — are the ones who have learned to live without the bright lights provided by perceived certainty and control. Like my son’s (and now my) mentor says, disabled people are the canaries in the coal mine, their lived experience providing a valuable resource even as we treat them like flies to be swatted away. They have navigated a system that is broken long before the rest of us recognize the cracks.
But the understory bears not only truth but grace too. Its shaded, humid, unruly environment plays a crucial role in forest regeneration. Down here next to the dirt is where the work is done or, perhaps, the grace happens that keeps the whole ecosystem alive. Things happen in the dark and quiet that couldn’t happen anywhere, or anytime, else. Through the darkness of Advent comes Christmas. Through the darkness of Lent, Easter. New life always springing up directly from these depths.
Re-storying is a trauma-informed idea in counseling that involves using new context to generate different meanings from past narratives. I love the promise it holds: this idea that grace can redefine our stories as it broadens our perspectives and enlarges our hearts. I’ve learned that it often works through witnessing others’ suffering, which is almost unavoidable in this cultural moment. Perhaps that is a sort of gift rather than something to solely avoid.
Maybe our trauma — our stories — should always be more collective.
