Every memory hurts. Everyone is traumatized.

My computer has a screen saver that shows a dynamic array of all my favorite photos, which are mostly of my kids over the years. My 15 year old is now significantly taller than me, and my 12 year old soon will be.

Seeing their smiles and little bodies from past years brings me so much joy. These photos capture priceless memories that are some of my most treasured.

And yet at the same time, every memory hurts.

Every memory hurts because they are either from before the pandemic, or during the pandemic, a pandemic that as much as we might want to say is “over” is still a factor in our lives.

The pre-pandemic memories hurt because I know what’s coming. And we are never going back to that time and that kind of innocence and unawareness of what’s coming.

In some ways those memories hurt even more.

I have a hard time believing anyone who says they are over it.

We have not all been impacted equally but we have all been impacted, even those of us who were lucky not to experience any of the more direct impacts such as job, food and housing insecurity, short or long term illness or death, or being on the frontline of the pandemic.

We are seeing an unprecedented level of trauma in our work in the workplace. Everyone is traumatized.

And by that I mean that the systemic oppression and other adverse experiences we have had - or our ancestors have had, or people who share similar identities to us have had - impact how we respond to current situations.

Everyone is not equally traumatized but everyone is traumatized. The old ways of doing things work even less well than they did before.

For leaders, this means understanding, expecting and accounting for the fact that we and our workforce are traumatized.

It means every move needs to be trauma-informed.

This includes strategic planning, communication, project management, hiring, compensation, feedback and more.

We’ve talked before about infusing trauma and equity awareness into decision making and planning.

In a future post, we’ll dive deeper into what trauma-informed communication might look like.

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