First Harm

We've all been harmed. Many of us have been harmed deeply, and had to go through a long, ugly healing process. Some of us are still carrying the injury around, tender to the touch. And then there's a harm on another scale entirely. Some people have been nearly wiped from the face of this earth. That's what happened to the Indigenous people of North America. Sit with that healing process for a second. Try to imagine its size.

If you don't bring a wound into the sunlight, it festers in the dark, quietly, patiently, waiting. So we name it. That's exactly what Dr. Edward Valandra, a Lakota scholar and restorative justice writer, did with his First Harm framework: restorative justice keeps trying to repair what came after while stepping right over the original wound, the theft of this land itself. His message is simple and it is not gentle: this first harm has to be healed for justice to be restored, for this land to actually heal.

And if you're reading this thinking it's a lesson for someone else, some other history, some other harm, here's where you're wrong. First Harm echoes through all emotional healing. The issue sitting in your life right now, the one you keep circling back to, isn't the original wound. It's just wearing its face. It's an old friend who never left, just changed clothes.

So what's yours?