A Sunday Reflection: Tragedy vs. Trauma

Sorting through slips of paper in my office.

Photo by Felipe Furtado on Unsplash

It was time . . .

My office had been collecting slips of paper with important things written on them for some time. So long that I had no idea why I had jotted the note down or what had precipitated it.

But as I wandered through the stack, one note stood out. It said: Tragedy vs. Trauma.

I wrote these words down while listening to a presentation by Dr. Dan Siegel, the Keynote Speaker at the virtual Trauma Sensitive Schools Conference. Dr. Siegel lives in Los Angeles and during the Q & A time, he was asked about the impact of the fires. While his house was safe, the park where he walked his dog was gone as was so much of the community around him.

Levine mentioned that though the fires were no longer raging, the air quality was very unhealthy. True. I heard one reporter call it a “toxic soup.” I lived there and the mountains trap the air in the low-lying areas by the coast.

The world has moved on outside of the L.A. area and it is easy to forget that the trauma of that day resulted in a tragic upending of life for many people. The tragedy continues.

Why the story resonated . . .

Below those words, I had written, “Scott in the ER = trauma. The ongoing impact on our lives = tragedy.” We have no idea how this escalated so quickly. We do know that the shifting sand of medical practices that change the doctors assigned to patients like the seats in a game of musical chairs caused an initial alert about Scott’s liver to fall through the cracks. A change in insurance precipitated the largest gap in consistent care. Being on Medicare (with supplemental) did not help. What happened resulted in four ER visits and a two-week stay in the hospital where we couldn’t seem to get a straight answer from the revolving teams of doctors. This was a traumatic event that initiated all the feelings of powerlessness.

The tragedy is how fundamentally our lives changed almost overnight. Like after the fires, it isn’t that people do not continue to care, but once the crisis is passed, what can be done? I do not think ill of people (trust me, many have continued to check in on us!) but there is a truth in the fact that trauma draws a crowd of helpers and tragedy is a long lonely trudge through mud.

What this week holds for us . . .

We have been home from the hospital for two very long months. While the nausea that landed Scott in the hospital has improved, he is far from well and it is clear that he will not improve unless there is a serious intervention.

We have the long-awaited appointment at Washington University Medical Center on Tuesday to meet with the liver transplant team. We have many questions that the pages of information we were sent do not answer. Our daughter is taking us to the appointment and I will be grateful to have her in the room during the consultation!

Will it be another traumatic event or just one more day in the continuing saga of this tragedy? Only Tuesday can answer that question.

Meanwhile. . .

Writing here on Substack has been a consistent form of self-care during these long days. No matter how stressful life is, an hour with my hands on the keyboard is my best regulation strategy. My eclectic mix of posts adds much-needed breathing spaces between the more serious topics. This is probably also true for readers. I am grateful to all who read!

Next week’s challenges may disrupt my consistent posting. One thing I want to avoid is making this writing that I enjoy into a chore that must be accomplished.

Finally . . .

In our 45 years of marriage, Scott and I have been very fortunate to have never faced a health crisis of this magnitude—for ourselves or our children. 2025 has given me new perspectives that I didn’t know I needed. I certainly didn’t want them! It is a reminder that people need us not just during a traumatic crisis but also during the process of mucking through the tragic upending of life as they knew it.

Yesterday, my daughter and friend both texted to tell me to look outside because there was a rainbow over my house. The first time I went out, I saw nothing. The second time, my friend said, “It is in your backyard.”

There was no pot of gold, but when I stepped outside the air was shimmering bright yellow. I stood in the yard and felt the glow all around me. The picture below is my best effort to recreate what it felt like!

And then it was gone.

This is the way God comforts me—almost always with nature—repeated in case I miss it the first time. As difficult as this time is, I am reminded every day, that I have not been forgotten by friends, or family. . . or God.