Lisa Fliegel’s upcoming book, Bulletproof Therapist: My Clinical Adventures in Inner-City Boston, Northern Ireland and Israel/Palestine, calls for peacemaking through trauma-informed practice.
She draws these narratives of healing from her work in three disparate places that have faced intractable pain and conflict. The distilled wisdom that informs these healing relationships can dramatically reshape how we interpret violence and achieve resolution.
Lisa talks with Marco Werman at Boston's Esplanade ahead of July 4th celebrations about the residual effects of trauma following the Boston Marathon bombings.
Belfast
Peace Wall
The Peace Walls in Northern Ireland were created to stem intercommunal violence between Catholic Nationalists and Protestant Unionists. These points of contact are referred to as Interfaces: zones of potential violence situated largely within the urban working class neighborhoods -- touchpoints of historical trauma.
BOSTON
Blue Hill Ave
The four-mile thoroughfare that runs through Boston's Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan neighborhoods is a border crossing. In the 1960s, a far reaching and discriminatory real-estate scam gutted the community. Today, that spine of the city delineates a geography of collective trauma.
ISRAEL
Separation Barrier
Israel says its wall / separation fence has reduced infiltrations by suicide bombers. It also effectively annexes 10 percent of Palestinian land in the West Bank to Israel. In the three years before it was built, suicide bombers killed 293 Israeli citizens. The International Court of Justice found the barrier to be a violation of international law.
Making Sense of Northern Ireland
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Transcending Trauma at the Intersection of Intractable Conflict