Atlanta has always been a city where people come together to drive change. From the Civil Rights Movement to today, we’ve shown the power of collective action, courage and hope. Now it’s time to unite around another urgent challenge: trauma healing.
While violence often makes headlines, it is frequently a symptom of deeper, longstanding challenges. Decades of disinvestment, concentrated poverty, housing instability, educational inequities, limited economic opportunity, systemic racism and chronic exposure to violence have created conditions where adversity accumulates across generations.
These experiences are what is often described as Adverse Childhood Experiences. And the evidence is clear: ACEs profoundly influence physical health, mental well-being, educational attainment, economic mobility and future exposure to violence.
To me, ACEs and violence are not separate issues. They are deeply intertwined. Exposure to violence can create trauma, and unaddressed trauma can increase vulnerability to future violence, creating a cycle that can persist across generations.
Trauma affects more Georgians than we realize. Nearly 16 percent of Georgia children have experienced at least two ACEs, while nearly one in four adults report four or more traumatic experiences, increasing their risk of lifelong health challenges.
These experiences do not define a person’s future, but they do shape health, relationships and opportunity. They also remind us why healing must be integral to any serious conversation about community well-being and violence prevention.
Healing from trauma is not something that happens without conscious effort and the fortitude to confront it. But if trauma can spread through families and communities, healing can spread as well.
The evidence for the power of trauma healing can be found all across Atlanta, where people are learning how to heal and help heal others. Healing is happening. Hope is happening. Transformation is happening.
Healing from trauma requires very private acts of courage, but it is also something that can be encouraged, supported and celebrated by our community. That’s why I’m proud to be a leader of a campaign and movement called OUR WORDS HEAL that’s just kicking off in Atlanta.
This campaign was originally co-designed by young people and community partners in Philadelphia and has now expanded to Atlanta. Through storytelling, visual and performing arts, social media, community conversations and shared experiences, our goal is to create opportunities for people to tell their own stories of trauma healing to reclaim their own narratives.
Above all, it is about recognizing something powerful that is already happening in our communities, born from a simple but profound belief that our words matter. The stories we tell about ourselves, our neighbors and our communities matter. They can be life changing and community empowering.
Too often, communities that experience trauma are defined by statistics, deficits, or headlines that focus only on pain and suffering. But that is not the full story. The full story also includes resilience. Creativity. Love. Hope.
As a physician, I have spent much of my career caring for individuals affected by illness, injury and trauma. What I have learned is that healing is about much more than treating symptoms. Healing requires connection. It requires creating environments where people can thrive. It requires trust.
That is exactly what OUR WORDS HEAL seeks to do.
Over the coming months, the campaign will share (and encourage everyone else to share) stories, experience art and witness creativity to celebrate and bear witness to the healing taking place across Atlanta. We will be reminded that every one of us has a role to play in building safer, healthier and more just communities.
All to shift perceptions and responses to trauma away from silence, stigma, blame and punishment — and toward understanding, healing and collective action.
I am grateful to my colleagues and co-founders at Strategies for Just Communities, Dr. Ted Corbin and Dr. John Rich, whose leadership and vision have helped bring this movement to life.
I am equally grateful for our incredible Atlanta partners — Gangstas to Growers, Notes for Notes, Compassion Center of Georgia, Mothers Against Gang Violence, Radical Optimist Collective, Walk With a Doc, Circle of Safety, Benjamin E. Mays High School and many others — who have demonstrated what is possible when communities come together around a common purpose.
Everyone involved in OUR WORDS HEAL understands something important: healing happens best with others. It happens in relationships. It happens when people feel seen, heard, valued and supported.
And it happens when cities come together to — once again — act, lead and proclaim the power of hope.
