Healing after complex trauma is not linear. It is not a smooth path with clear milestones every so often to let you know you are making progress. Healing after complex trauma looks different for all of us. After over 16 years since my exploitation and drug addiction, I still have night terrors. I am still easily startled and slow to trust new people, especially men. I also am an accomplished clinical social worker, assistant professor, published researcher, mom, and yogi. I am many things. Among those, I am a survivor of sex trafficking, adolescent trauma, and all the fun and glamour that goes with heroin addiction.
When I discovered I was pregnant a month before I turned 21, I quit smoking, drinking, drugs, and slipped both a madam and a pimp to restart my life on the college track. I had been a college student when I was recruited into an escort service at 17, but the damage had been done long before that time by abusive boyfriends, rape, and girlfriends who used my naivete for their own gain from the age of 13. So when faced with the prospect of “a little extra money” to “dance and put on a show”, I was just broken enough to say yes.
It was after many years of violence, exploitation, and instability that I found myself pregnant and tired of that life. Tired of the rug always being pulled out from under me. And it would take years more before I learned to trust that the rug was staying put, that my life would keep getting better if I kept moving forward.
The title of this posting is so important to me because it was by the support of my family that I was able to come back to life, starting to believe that my life was worth something. My body was home to this little boy who mattered and suddenly I had to keep myself safe because he needed me. My parents supported me in attending school and finishing my Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. They reminded me that I was a decent person, a good mother, that I could do this. I just had to keep going.
When I felt like I wanted to crash and use and run away, I would look at my son and remember what my life was about. I mattered now because he needed a mother. Being a mother meant something. In those darker times, out of exploitation but still so raw and healing, I couldn’t have done any of it without my community supporting me and reminding me to look at my son, to remember why I kept fighting my demons.
Studies show that social support is one of the most critical elements of success for survivors of sex trafficking, as well as other traumatic experiences such as criminal justice re-entry or aging out of foster care. What is social support exactly? Essentially, it means having people who care enough about you to stick around. Even when you are hard to deal with. Even when your trauma makes you afraid of everything or gives you a hair-trigger temper. Social support means community.
Intentional community, specifically, is a group of people with a common mission, supporting each other and crafting relationships, while participating in cooperative living (Foundation for Intentional Community (FIC), 2019; One Shared House, 2018; Sager, 2018). The term community can be used to describe groups of people with varying living arrangements and levels of closeness, while intentional community emphasizes social relationships and shared space. The relationships are what make it special. Intentional community members live together working toward a common goal and dedicating time to developing vulnerability and emotional intimacy. In other words, your chosen family.
My experience with healing from my trauma was through the social support provided to me by my immediate family and a few trusted close friends. They gave me a place to live with food and rent included. They helped with childcare so I could go back to school. They talked to me when I felt like I couldn’t keep going. I didn’t have to go back to trading sex for money, and now that I was a mom, maybe I didn’t have to identify as a junkie and a prostitute. Maybe I could decide who I was going to become.
After sex trafficking, survivors need substantial, daily social support. Numerous studies have shown that successful getting out and staying out of a life of sexual exploitation is largely determined by the presence of social support (Brunovskis & Surtees, 2015; Hedin & Månsson, 2004; Hickle, 2014). In fact, survivors have been shown to exhibit more severe symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder when social support is not available upon exit from sex trafficking (Hossain, Zimmerman, Abas, Light, & Watts, 2010; Tsutsumi, Izutsu, Poudyal, Kato, & Marui, 2008).
So why does having people in your life, especially those you see every day, increase resilience and positive outcomes after sex trafficking? First, you have someone present if you have a mental health crisis. Someone to talk to. Someone to talk you out of picking up the needle or the pipe. Someone to remind you that sex work wasn’t glamorous and that you can make money doing other things. Second, and relatedly, you have an economic stopgap. Hopefully, in the early phases of recovery, sex trafficking survivors are not being asked to pay for basic needs. Money is tricky and feeling economic insecurity can trigger an urge to return to life, use drugs, or general trauma from childhood experiences. Third, you are accountable to someone who cares about you and may also need your support. Intentional communities typically house folks with a similar mission or issue, with the aim of providing targeted peer-based support.
A few programs around the country have done intentional communities with various at-risk populations such as foster care alumni, senior citizens, and returning citizens (i.e. criminal justice-involved adults). Bridge Meadows and Treehouse Foundation each use an intergenerational model of care where youth and families impacted by child welfare can live together and build relationships (Bridge Meadows, 2019; Treehouse Foundation, 2019). Changing Perceptions and the F5 Project each use small housing and peer mentorship models to build connections for returning citizens as they navigate reentry after prison (Changing Perceptions, 2018; The F5 Project, 2019). One important element of all of these programs is that they help individuals, who society has pushed to the margins, reclaim their futures and identities.
Intentional community is a specific kind of social support. You live with other people who are working on healing from similar things. You support each other daily with transitioning into regular life. And, each survivor has the opportunity to share and not be stigmatized for their experiences. We all came through something dark, an experience where our bodies were not our own. Now we get to redefine our path and our identities, together.
For more information on intentional communities for sex trafficking survivors, please check out our website at www.restoringivycollective.org. We are a community of sex trafficking survivors, building intentional community and healing from trauma.
References
Bridge Meadows. (2019). About Us. Retrieved from https://bridgemeadows.org/about-us
Brunovskis, A., & Surtees, R. (2015). Coming home: Challenges in family reintegration for trafficked women. Qualitative Social Work, 12(4), 454–472. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473325011435257
Changing Perceptions. (2018). About Us. Retrieved from
Foundation for Intentional Community (FIC). (2019). Community Types. Retrieved from https://www.ic.org/directory/community-types/
Hedin, U. C., & Månsson, S. A. (2004). The importance of supportive relationships among women leaving prostitution. Journal of Trauma Practice, 2(3/4), 223-237. https://doi.org/10.1300/J189v02n03_13
Hickle, K. E. (2014). Getting out: A Qualitative Exploration of the Exiting Experience Among Former Sex Workers and Adult Sex Trafficking Victims (Order No. 3617847). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (1528555080)
Hossain, M., Zimmerman, C., Abas, M., Light, M., & Watts, C. (2010). The relationship of trauma to mental disorders among trafficked and sexually exploited girls and women. American journal of public health, 100(12), 2442–2449. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2009.173229
One Shared House. (2018). At home together: Building shared living communities. Retrieved from https://medium.com/space10/at-home-together-building-shared-living-communities- f278a08b88cc
Sager, T. (2018). Planning by intentional communities: An understudied form of activist planning. Planning Theory, 17(4), 449–471. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095217723381
The F5 Project. (2019). About. Retrieved from
Treehouse Foundation. (2019). Who we are: Mission and History. Retrieved from https://www.treehousefoundation.net/who-we-are/
Tsutsumi, A., Izutsu, T., Poudyal, A. K., Kato, S., & Marui, E. (2008). Mental health of female survivors of human trafficking in Nepal. Social science & medicine (1982), 66(8), 1841–1847. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2007.12.025
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Dr. Elizabeth Bowman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work at Gallaudet University. She is also a minor domestic sex trafficking survivor, anti-trafficking advocate, mother of two teens, researcher, clinician, and speaker. In her clinical practice, she works with trafficking survivors using trauma-informed yoga group therapy and also has a clinical practice supporting children and adolescents with anxiety and other challenges. She is the founder and executive director of the Restoring Ivy Collective in Washington, D.C., a survivor-led organization that provides drop-in services, group therapy, and support to survivors of sex trafficking with a focus on intentional community and sisterhood.
