About You and Human Trafficking | Truth #2

by Elouise

Truth #1 – When you or I touch the life of just one person who has been trafficked or who is at risk of being trafficked, that’s more than enough!

Truth #2 – We need trafficking victims as much as they need us to remind us of our deep need for healing of all kinds.

This includes sexual healing as well as healing from lie-driven, contempt-filled relational dynamics.  Especially, but not only, between women and men.

In 2010, when I began reading widely about human trafficking I believed I was learning about “them.”  I’d agreed to co-teach a seminar on sex trafficking.  Yet I didn’t think I was a very likely candidate to co-teach such a seminar.

So I decided to turn it into a research project —as though I were an investor.   I had time, energy and money.  How might I make a difference in the lives of trafficked women, children and men?  The approach worked great.  In fact, my co-teacher and I decided to structure the entire seminar this way.

For me personally, the seminar had several unexpected outcomes.
 Along the way I learned many things about sex trafficking.  Yet I also learned more about myself than I’d bargained for.  If I was going to make a difference in this area, I had to let it make a difference in me.

  • First, I learned that if I felt personally drawn toward advocacy in this area, it was highly likely I was myself in need of sexual healing.  I remember the first time I heard this notion from one of our guest speakers.  I was terrified.  I knew I had homework to do.  I couldn’t imagine myself actually doing the homework.  Hadn’t I already done enough work on life issues?
  • Second, I learned that the more I listened to the stories of victim survivors, the more I began to understand some of the healing I needed.  As it turned out, the scariest part of all this was actually listening to victim survivors telling their stories.  Out loud!  In public!  Sometimes in writing!  It had never occurred to me that telling one’s story publicly—in a safe manner—was part of healing.  Did I really want to be healed?  I took this teaching assignment so I could help make a difference in the world.  Now it sounded as though I needed to be part of what was different in the world.
  • Finally, I caught a tiny glimpse of what could happen in a seminar setting when safety was the number one aim of the seminar for everyone.  Besides my co-teacher and me, there were five women and four men in the seminar.  We were a mixed group internationally, racially and economically.  Could we learn to have safe, honest dialogue with each other about even one difficult topic?  Before the end of the semester, we had done just that, and I’d had my first taste of how freeing it was to share ‘shameful’ parts of my history with adults I trusted.

It’s tempting to think this anti-human trafficking effort is all about them—the women, children and men trafficked daily for their labor and/or for sex.  It is about them.  It’s also about us!

Are we willing to look at our own wounds?  Each of us carries damage from the lie-driven, contempt-filled dynamics of human relationships.  These dynamics have shaped our work and each of us since the beginning of time.

Are we willing to listen to the stories of survivor victims and be reminded of places where we still need healing?  We need each other!  This isn’t about heroes and heroines coming to the rescue of others ‘less fortunate than ourselves.’

It’s about waking up to the reality that if we don’t listen to each other, we won’t have a clue how to interpret our own histories—personal, communal, national and global.  What happens somewhere else IS my business.  Am I willing to look into the mirror and begin to understand how that could be so?

To be continued….

© Elouise Renich Fraser, 4 January 2015