Julian of Norwich, Her Showings and Its Contexts, Website © Julia Bolton Holloway, 1997

OLIVE LEAF:

A WEBSITE FOR HEALING OF

SOUL, MIND, BODY

TRAUMA

Viktor Frankl in several books written both before and after Auschwitz discussed the importance of meaning, rather than of sex and power, as essential for the health of the body, the mind, the soul. A group of us, some members, priests, some, monastics or formerly so, some, lawyers, some in psychiatry, but most of us victims in some way or other to trauma which have caused loss of meaning, have collectively been studying the evidence. The results: with sudden, meaningless natural disaster, or with war trauma, or with sexual abuse, especially in incest or by clergy or religious, or with birth trauma, there can be an effect on individuals' souls, ranging from numbing to depression to alcohol and substance abuse to bipolarity to multiple personality disorder to suicide. The evidence is that such trauma can effect neurophysiological changes to the chemistry of the brain and the human personality. Where the abuse is an isolated instance it may be more easily treated and healed, especially if help comes soon after the event. Where the abuse has been repeated and the condition ignored, or covered over by denial, the prognosis is less favourable.

Sigmund Freud had thought the greatest drive was for sex, Alfred Adler for power, while Viktor Frankl spoke movingly of the need for meaning for true happiness. Anna Freud noted that children involved in war-bombing needed to tell of their trauma for healing to take place. Sigmund Freud initially found most cases of mental illness were caused by childhood trauma and sexual abuse within his patients' families, then turned away from his own discoveries, represssing them. Gradually psychiatry has returned to Freud's initial findings, though not to his perception as to what consists man's most important drive. It is God, the search for God, the love of God, which most heals. But for many that royal road has been destroyed with terrible land mines, injuring innocents, maiming and killing bodies, minds and souls. It has been deliberately made meaningless.

Our particular group, dealing with trauma within churches by clergy, has found that we could in turn help others in similar situations at the onset, victims of bomb trauma and other disasters where victims are innocent and the deaths and injuries meaningless punishment. We have particularly turned to theology for this healing, as ourselves wounded healers. In the life and teachings of Christ, who lived and died under oppression and injustice, we see a mirror held up to our own time. Our particular perspective is Christian and ecumenical, based on the Sacraments, the Gospels, upon simplicity and charity, the love of God and neighbour, recognizing no boundaries, God despising nothing that is created. We see in our work that we are dealing with the seeds of war, racism, rape, madness and much else, and that with greater understanding of such trauma and its effects it could become possible to help heal individuals and nations. Olive leaves come literally from those at Gethsemani in Israel and these around Settignano in Italy. They reflect Ezechiel 47.13 and Revelation 22.2 of the heavenly Jerusalem's leaves for the healing of the nations.

This website is open to victims of such trauma and to those seeking ways to end such meaninglessness. Its methods are drawn from the healing by each other of Alcoholics Anonymous. It draws as well upon the observations of Anna Freud and Leslie Marmon Silko, of the therapy of the telling of tales. Great writers, such as Julian of Norwich, Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Nathanael Hawthorne, Fyodor Dosteivsky, Virginia Woolf, and Alice Walker, have orchestrated their own abuse and its healing with that of their readers. We invite submissions of essays, stories, and reviews. We can send blessed olive leaves to all those in need of them. They are especially beneficial to their recipients if given in turn to their abusers - for their healing. And to abusers, dead or alive, for this illness can last beyond a lifetime. Sometimes we may need to heap graves with blessed olive leaves. Likewise the stories that are submitted are never vengeful, victims being literally truthful, but with healing coming to retell their trauma: 'Pearls are like poet's tales, disease turned into loveliness'.

Click on the Essay Titles Below to Read Their Contents:

Return to the Index Homepage

Go to the Juliansite Homepage

Go to the Comunita dei figli di Dio Homepage

Go to the Anglo-Italian Studies Homepage

Book Reviews. Submissions Encouraged.

Bibliography. Submissions Encouraged.

Tell-Tales. Submissions Encouraged. Payment: A Blessed Olive Leaf.

The Julian Library Portfolio, 1996.
© Copyright Julia Bolton Holloway (juliana@tin.it), Fiesole
Website Design: Timothy E. Thompson (tethomps@syr.fi.it), Florence
Webmaster: Otfried Lieberknecht (lieberknecht@ber.netsurf.de), Berlin
Nota Bene Consultant: Tony St Quintin (tsq@nb-uk.win-uk.net), Leeds

This site last updated 2 November 1998.