Fissures: Overview

At Silent Blessings, our mission statement includes the idea of promoting spiritual healing among families that have D/deaf people in them. The term “healing” implies some form of injury, and as advocates for Deaf people, we are keenly aware of the harm done by operating from a “fix the broken” mindset. This often leads to interesting conversations like the one we had today. It’s worth exploring, and big enough for several articles. So, for an introduction, let’s consider geology…

Far out west, there’s a place where the American continent is broken. My generation grew up with warnings that the San Andreas Fault could give way any time and make the entire west coast an island, or worse. Instead of “The Big One,” we’ve watched the erosion of the coast due to smaller landslides. Either way, destruction lies just below the visible surface, waiting for an event or chain of events to make a mess of things.

I tried to find out how many fault lines are in America. The short answer is, lots, and they’re everywhere. Most answer sites focus on defining the types of faults that exist, categorized by the movement of the plates. It’s interesting stuff, but a bit beyond this discussion. So let’s go back to talking about families…

All families, being made up of individual people, have fault lines — places where the characteristics that make us unique also make predictable issues. Familiar cases are the challenges that come with military and first-responder families, such as the undercurrent of anxiety with every farewell. Or blended families, with multiple authorities and divided loyalties pulling the hearts of children & parents like a taffy machine. Or pastoral families, where the children are measured by high standards set for the spiritual leader who happens to also be a parent. And when the family is part of what we call “the Silent World,” there’s an equally predictable set of issues and stressors.

In this series, we’ll explore several of these realities, and the reasons why “bringing spiritual healing to D/deaf families” is a need, and our declared mission.

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