Prior to 1992, evidence of physical abuse was inadmissible in criminal trials, and a history of spousal abuse was not allowed as a defense in most murder trials. By ignoring the conditions that led to murder, the justice system avoided addressing whether these women’s actions were done in self-defense.

‘Til Death Do Us Part shares the life stories of twelve women incarcerated in California before battered women syndrome became an acceptable explanation for why a woman might murder her domestic partner. Today, with this informed understanding of the conditions that lead women to stay with abusive partners, a woman is more likely to receive a lesser sentence, such as voluntary manslaughter, and not first degree murder and a life sentence for killing a violent spouse.

Lusty’s documentary chronicles how the justice system fails women tried before 1992, often keeping these women locked up despite lacking reasonable evidence that they pose any threat to society (many are elderly). All the women in the documentary have served over a decade behind bars and fulfill sentencing requirements for the lesser manslaughter charge. Yes, justice is served, but not for these women still victimized by antiquated laws and lingering misconceptions about the nature of violence in intimate relationships.

‘Til Death Do Us Part stays true to Lusty’s commitment to give voice to women who have been unjustly silenced. Lusty respectfully weaves in expert testimony with the women’s stories of domestic violence and their later victimization by the judicial system. We learn just enough from experts to understand factors contributing to domestic violence and how the judicial system fails battered women.

‘Til Death Do Us Part shows the justice system has much further to go in serving justice to battered women. The film highlights the efforts of the California Habeas Project—a group working for the release of women tried for murder of an abusive partner prior to 1992—but as the film illustrates, what should be a straightforward process is bogged down by false impressions, politics, and inattention.

In the interview, Wolterstorff describes how various roles (Perpetrator, Victim, Savior) are both taken and projected in traumatic reenactments, including in psychotherapy. He also gives an interesting explanation of how the roles we identify with as individuals contribute to feeling overwhelmed, and shows how a similar phenomenon on a societal level contributes to splitting into disconnected, opposing groups. Very thought-provoking ideas, which Wolterstorff backs up with community involvement.

You can listen to the interview with Wolterstorff on social trauma or download a PDF transcript.

The WHO gives guidelines for administering the test that emphasize respect and tact towards participants. Even so, when collecting data from trauma survivors, I think there is a responsibility to avoid activating traumatic defenses.

In our efforts to generate evidence for a trauma-informed health care system, we must balance getting supportive data with the possibility of re-traumatizing people. This won’t be an easy task and may require trained health care workers being present to support those who feel overwhelmed by recalling childhood traumas.

You’ve got to hand it to Nature–nightmares are an ingenious way of cultivating survival.

Nightmares arising from trauma may also be opportunities to learn life lessons. Yet it’s hard to imagine looking for the meaning of a nightmare when it is about the most horrific moments of one’s past. What lesson could be learned from such terror and suffering?

Psychology researcher Matthew Walker and Dr. Murray Raskind suggest using the drug prazosin to end nightmares associated with PTSD. Prazosin, a drug originally marketed to treat blood pressure, also makes people less sensitive to the stress hormone noradrenaline. In our more benign dreams, when noradrenaline drops off, emotional intensity also diminishes. And emotional intensity is what makes nightmares feel real and frightening.

While recognizing the importance of emotions, Walker believes repetitive nightmares are a sign that traumatic stress has lasted too long. From an interview with Amy Standen of NPR:

 “But I don’t think it’s adaptive to hold onto that emotional blanket around those memories forever,” he says. “They’ve done their job at the time of learning, then it’s time to hold on to the information of that memory, but let go of the emotion.”

I agree with Walker in principle. It’s best to learn life’s lessons and get on with the business of living. Yet I also have faith in two million years of human evolution. And I believe medicating the symptoms of distress can interfere with natural and evolved capacities for overcoming trauma.

John Briere, a psychologist at USC, looks to “ethnocultural” beliefs to augment the Western understanding of trauma. An ethnocultural lens examines both how cultures address trauma and what is perceived as traumatic experiences. According to Briere, many non-Western cultures equate soul loss with what the West calls PTSD. Similarly, Peter Levine wrote about a culture that described trauma as rape of the soul. Universally, trauma can lead to isolation, and isolation leads to soul loss. We need meaningful connections to keep soul alive.

Soul loss also occurs in the West, even though the word soul is avoided, especially in medicine. Yet you know you are at risk of losing your soul if after a traumatic event (or series of events) you spend a great deal of time hypervigilant, looking for signs the traumatic event might recur. Over time, the unrelenting fear and anxiety become too much, and solace is sought, often in addictions. Behavior is also inhibited to avoid being triggered. Without intervention, the habit of avoiding reminders of the original trauma leads to an isolated existence. For some, this may mean literally shutting out the world. For others, not letting people get to know them becomes the primary defense. For many, addictions create a wall against humanity.

For millions of years humans lived in close-knit groups in which everyone played a vital role in the clan’s survival. It wasn’t an option to have someone cooped up in the house, isolated, watching TV, drowning distress in alcohol—or whatever a traumatized caveperson might have done to avoid reminders of trauma. That would never happen, and not because there weren’t TVs or houses. Survival was too precarious for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to feed and shelter a traumatized person unable to contribute to daily needs. (In US history, one of the original appeals of mental institutions was the opportunity to house family members who couldn’t work and thus drained family resources.)

In a society that listens for the meaning of dreams, nightmares might alert the group to the presence of threats too big for one person to handle. Traumatic stress is by nature communicable. In psychotherapy we have a term for the contagious quality of trauma: vicarious traumatization. I have come to believe the infective quality of trauma is part of its so-called symptomatolgy. Traumatic stress may have evolved to be somewhat “contagious” since any experience that is traumatic to one of us is potentially a threat to us all.

Perhaps in our isolated and medicalized society, prescribing drugs for nightmares is the most humane response. When traumatic stress results in a life lived in isolation, it can be daunting to get back in the world, amidst all the potential triggers. Having a drug to dampen traumatic defenses is not an unreasonable initial form of support. Yet ultimately, we need opportunities for collective responses to trauma that keep the traumatized person from becoming isolated in the first place.

Research shows that when people find meaning in traumatic experiences they can recover (and often without professional help). Survivors of Pearl Harbor who interpreted their nightmares as reasonable responses to the bombings were able to get on with their lives. Yet knowing that responses are reasonable often requires talking to others about our experiences.

If isolation is the downward spiral of trauma, then perhaps nightmares are the phoenix’s call from the ashes. Even in trauma, nightmares have a lesson to teach. Yet deciphering their meaning may need the entire tribe’s attention. In the case of returning Veterans, nightmares of war may be a call for Americans to collectively address war’s scourge on the souls of young soldiers, along with the intergenerational impact of war, which as a nation we have a long history of ignoring.

If you would like to support Veterans who could benefit from someone listening to their stories, visit When Johnny and Jane Come Marching Home.

Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez also teaches art that heals. From the article by Elda Silva:

In an art class she teaches, Debora Kuetzpal Vasquez asks students to write down a bad memory in a journal, then paint over it in white. The last step of the exercise is to “paint something beautiful over it,” Vasquez says. The idea is not to gloss over the past, but “to try to move that memory into something different.”

Keutzpal Vasquez takes a similar approach to her multimedia show at Bihl Haus Arts. The exhibit was inspired by interviews with women about their experiences of domestic abuse. The installation makes up different rooms of a house. Like the art her students create, abusive words inscribed on walls leave traces in the paint that covers them.

Keutzpal Vasquez describes her exhibit as a “safe place,” and adds in her interview with Silva, “I always say if there’s anywhere in the world that you should be safe, it’s in your home.”

So true.

The photographer, Grace Brown, also accepts submissions for her website.