Project Rebirth Read Free Page B

understand that bearing witness, amplifying the story, and taking right action are our most important tasks. But how do we witness, and what is right action?” These questions, like all of the wisest inquiries, are unanswerable, to some extent. And yet, those whose life work is located in the trenches of human suffering continue to explore ever more skillful ways of helping healing along.
    It’s not just about the individual professional’s capacity, of course, but also about the capacity to coordinate a response among professionals working in a variety of realms. An unprecedented partnership was forged following September 11th between two very different organizations: Disaster Psychiatry Outreach and New York Disaster Interfaith Services. They were able to work together to acknowledge that healing the whole victim is not just about emotion, nor is it just about spirit, but about the combination of the two.
    In a critical, co-edited new book, Creating Spiritual and Psychological Resilience: Integrating Care in Disaster Relief Work , Grant H. Brenner, Daniel H. Bush, and Joshua Moses write: “These partnerships have the potential to help societies harness the transformational capacities disasters hold for resilience—for how we might redress chronic, long-simmering ills in new ways, comfort the bereaved, rebuild with the survivors, and perhaps even help people better situations they were in prior to disasters.” Indeed, Dr. April Naturale, who directed the disaster mental health response called Project Liberty, found that many of the people her organization served reported that they never would have sought mental health services prior to September 11th, but felt that the experience had deeply enriched their lives in many different areas.
    Project Rebirth is ultimately a book about the power of the human spirit to rebuild itself—within and among community. Those who lost loved ones in the World Trade towers or barely escaped from the wreckage themselves had their lives instantaneously devastated. Who they were on September 10, 2001—how they spent each day, how they saw the world, what they expected from the future—was entirely dismantled. They were put in the unenviable position of reconstructing their very lives. And therein lies the miracle. They did it. They took the most malicious misfortune imaginable and transformed it—tear by tear, day by day, dawn by dawn.
    They are not alone. It wasn’t just those directly affected by the events of September 11 who felt their lives forever change. We all got a taste of destabilization. Further still, even if in a drastically different context, we all mourn. We hope that in these courageous stories you will find echoes of your own experiences of loss and recovery. We hope that this book will serve as comfort amid discomfort, these words as reconnection to hope, these flawed and fierce examples as a reminder of the universal human capacity for resilience.
    In a world in which so many of our days are filled with the minutiae of existence—the cable bill, the carpool schedule, the bureaucracy at work, at school, at the doctor’s office—it’s more important than ever that we take a moment to focus on the most essential elements of our existence. At a time when 140 characters and thirty-second sound bites have become our dominant forms of communication, this book offers the depth that comes from decade-long stories and painstaking reflection.
    Tragedy like the kind faced by the people profiled in this book forces that quality of focus. It inspires us to ask the most basic questions that we face as human beings: What is my life about? What’s important? How can I use my energy for good? Have I loved well? What is my legacy? What’s more, it compels us to not settle for the easy answers. Instead, we honor the complexity of our lives and losses by stepping away from the cacophony of modern life and really listening to the