As family and systemic therapists, we know from the families we work with that peace is neither a constant nor a static experience, never just ‘on tap’. It is always and everywhere relational, growing in the spaces between warring parts of a family, between warring parts of ourselves. It’s a verb not a noun, always representing movement toward something calmer and safer.
Far from an ethereal, passive presence, in my Dad’s words, peace is a ‘brave bastard’.
It crawls over and creeps in from the debris of mistrust between people, between communities, showing itself once the existence of multiple truths is shown, and their co-existence enabled. It’s the calmer water that follows waves that crash inside us, and between us. It emerges from darkness.
And we are in dark times. Global religious vilification, the dire trauma of Palestinian and Israeli families that will scar generations to come and now fresh antisemitic horror on our own shores. No one could be blamed for kicking the very notion of peace into the gutter. In the face of atrocity, everyone’s capacity to think and respond effectively risks paralysis. It leaves you breathless.
Even with our long reputation at the Bouverie Centre for being a home to social justice mavericks - ‘brave bastards’ - the question of ‘what to do’ isn’t easily answered. The “both/and” perspective germane to systemic practice helps, if just a little. Because it’s also true to say that sights of extraordinary courage have equally left us breathless, with renewed focus on healing pathways and the strong pull of collective humanity.
Within our existing service capacity, the Bouverie Centre will continue to offer our family therapy and secondary consultation services. We will continue to help Victorian families for whom the year’s events ricochet with pre-existing struggles, where new trauma meets old trauma within and between family members. We will offer our colleagues and partner services a shoulder, an ear, a third eye toward sustaining balance in the face of it all. We will continue to promote collective safety, one family at a time, and one practitioner at a time, through new skills for listening – deep listening in the spirit of Dadirri [1] - and for hearing the previously unheard.
We may not have all the answers. But we do have a strong commitment toward peace.
Take care of yourselves, and of each other.
Professor Jenn McIntosh PhD, AM
Director, The Bouverie Centre, La Trobe University
Professor of Family Therapy & Systemic Practice
[1] Dadirri:The Quiet Stillness Inside Us. Dr. Miriam-Rose Ungunmerr-Baumann. The Miriam Rose Foundation.
