Abstract
The articles in this issue of The Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling (JPC&C) focus on trauma, support, and healing. As the book review by Dr. Diane D. Walsh notes, “Our society is becoming increasingly aware of the impact of trauma, and many helping professionals are seeking resources to support trauma survivors” (2024). Likewise, many of our readers, especially following the May 2024 ACPE annual conference, are reflecting on ways to promote justice-seeking care amidst institutional and social structures that often inflict and perpetuate trauma. The first part of this issue explores moral injury, trauma, and challenging ministerial and social contexts. The second part points toward healing, with strategies and supports for spiritual care providers and their patients, clients, and parishioners.
A theological exploration of medical and military moral injury by Atsushi Shibaoka (2024) explores potential “shattering of core sustaining belief systems” and individual moral expectations. Moral injury can be sustained in a multitude of contexts, and from a variety of potentially morally injurious events. One example provided by Shibaoka (citing Amsalem et al.) is the trauma many healthcare workers experienced as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the context of which included institutional failures such as lack of ventilators, training, and personal protective equipment. The impacts of violence currently happening in various areas of our global community can result in moral injury to the many involved locally and to those who may be concerned about complicity via funding, governmental policies, or other forms of participation.
Challenging contexts for chaplains, clinical counselors, pastors, and other helping professionals are wide ranging; issues often surface when providing spiritual support to traditionally marginalized patients, clients, or congregants, such as those who are LGBTQ+ in theologically conservative churches. In the research article “Tending to the Flock: The Experiences of LDS Clergy with LGBTQ Congregants” by Adlyn M. Perez-Figueroa et al. (2024), the authors report some challenges and strategies encountered and employed by clergy supporting LGBTQ congregants. Several effective strategies were highlighted by clergy, including listening and expressing availability, but they also emphasized the ongoing need for “additional support and direction” in their ministry with LGBTQ+ individuals and their congregations.
As helping professionals intentional about the positive transformations we support in individuals and communities, we are aware that many organizations and institutions underestimate and undervalue the significant contributions of our fields. As detailed in both of the paired articles of “Assessing Impact Amongst Chaplains in a University Setting” (which report study phases one and two), there is “a common belief amongst chaplains that evaluation of impact [is important,] both to speak into their institution and also for moral-theological reasons around the need for accountability” (Miller et al., 2024). The second phase of that research project responded by supporting chaplains in developing a resource to increase, measure, and report on impact. The tool “enables the chaplains to reflect on their work, to identify their goals, to make adjustments and improvements, to be more intentional in aspects of their work, and also to find a means to articulate their offering in ways which can be understood by others outside chaplaincy” (Miller et al., 2024).
The second part of this issue of JPC&C builds on the themes of responding to trauma and other challenges and fostering healing. The research article and two reflection articles, “Utilizing Poetry as Spiritual Care for Hospital Staff,” “A Call to Journal: Grief Work and Poetry,” and “Two Charting Practices Chaplains Should Change,” include practical approaches to help us stay healthy, support our patients, clients, and parishioners, and avoid burnout.
Rebecca Doverspike's (2024) work on poetry in spiritual care reminds us both of the personal benefits of poetry (“expressing the poem situates my own heart at ease, provides it warmth”) and the structural: “Poetry feels like an antidote to the ways language is manipulated in the political and capitalist dimensions of our world.” Suggested practices to share poetry include an Intensive Care Unit Poetry Basket, providing poetry with Aromatherapy Towelette Hand Blessings, Reading Poems to the Nurse Practice Council, and more.
Janet L. Kuhnke's (2024) deeply moving reflection on journaling and grief is a support to spiritual care providers in their ministries, but, most especially, in their own self-care. She writes: “In my grief, my time writing was a place where I could dance with loss as it moved across my landscape.…I wanted to understand grief, not as an academic, but as a daughter.” The item for JPC&C's “In the Media” section, a reflection on the film “Maestro” by Florence Gelo, builds on the themes in the issue to prompt us to “recognize an occasion of gripping love in our own life,” affirm love and relationships, and “create a new path and restore love's meaning and possibilities.”
It is an honor to journey with you and all helping professionals as we strive to recognize and support those impacted by trauma. In promoting justice-seeking care and healing, we can utilize the research and reflections of those in professional fields of care to help individuals, families, communities, and other institutions. In doing so, we create and uplift restorative practices and repair some of the damage done within, and by, our larger communities.