Reading Jackson Clark’s tribute to Tyrone Yazzie (Herald, Jan. 5), the young, Indigenous man who worked in Clark’s art gallery and died living homeless and addicted to alcohol, raised a concern for me. Jackson, who clearly loved Yazzie and wished for his healing, characterizes Yazzie as having “chose the life he lived,” because he had opportunities for rehabilitation and patently chose otherwise. The brief mention that Yazzie suffered abuse as a child suggests a different story.
Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, trauma researcher, clinician and bestselling author of “The Body Keeps the Score,” explains that abuse suffered during childhood changes brain development, capacity for self-regulation and ultimately may affect one's ability to make life-serving choices. He notes that “Child abuse and neglect is the single most common cause of drug and alcohol abuse.”
And, because trauma is not distributed evenly – child abuse and adverse childhood experiences being more prevalent in impoverished regions – it can be dangerous to perpetuate a belief that we all have equal access to inner choice. Dangerous because this places the locus of control and change on the individual rather than the intractable systems of poverty, violence, oppression, and substandard housing and education into which many children are born. And even though recognized and effective treatments for trauma now exist, many piloted on veterans with PTSD, these treatments are sadly neither accessible nor affordable to all.
Perhaps the most meaningful tribute to those we’ve lost to childhood trauma is to support policies that aim for the thriving of all Americans.
Rachel Turiel
Durango