I am often asked how I can work with a subject as morbid as

Host: The rain had stopped just before midnight. The streets were slick, their lights stretching into long ribbons across the pavement, like memories trying to hold their shape before fading. A small apartment window glowed above a narrow bookstore, and through it came the faint sound of a piano — hesitant, searching, beautiful in its uncertainty.

Inside, the room was warm, lit only by a single lamp that cast a trembling circle of gold across a table scattered with notes, books, and half-empty cups of tea.

Jack sat by the window, his elbows on the sill, watching the city breathe again after the storm. Across from him, Jeeny sat cross-legged on the couch, her fingers tracing the spine of a book she hadn’t opened. The air between them hummed with quiet, thoughtful gravity — that kind of stillness that only comes when two people are standing in the echo of something vast.

Jeeny: “You ever read Peter Levine?”

Jack: “The trauma guy?”

Jeeny: “Yeah. He once said something that’s been sitting with me all week. ‘I am often asked how I can work with a subject as morbid as trauma without becoming burned out or depressed. My answer to this question is that witnessing the transformation that takes place in people when they master their traumas has proven to be a deeply sustaining and uplifting experience in my life.’”

Jack: “Hmm.” (He took a slow breath, staring at the wet streets below.) “I suppose that’s the difference between a healer and a cynic.”

Jeeny: “Which one are you tonight?”

Jack: “Cynic, obviously.” (He smiled faintly.) “But I envy people like him. They walk through fire and come out cleaner. I walk through smoke and just choke on it.”

Host: The lamp light flickered, as if responding to the weight of his words. Jeeny’s eyes softened, reflecting both empathy and something sharper — that quiet fire she kept for truth.

Jeeny: “That’s not true. You’ve just learned to build homes in your ashes instead of climbing out.”

Jack: “That’s poetic. But homes in ashes are still ruins.”

Jeeny: “Not always. Sometimes they’re sanctuaries — places where pain becomes wisdom. That’s what Levine meant, Jack. Trauma doesn’t just break people; it reveals the parts of them strong enough to survive the breaking.”

Host: A faint breeze from the cracked window moved through the room, stirring the pages of a book on the table. Its title — Waking the Tiger — caught a brief glint of light.

Jack: “You make it sound holy. But trauma doesn’t transform everyone. For most, it’s just a wound that never closes.”

Jeeny: “That’s true. Not everyone heals. But healing isn’t forgetting the wound — it’s learning how to live around it without bleeding on everything.”

Jack: “You talk like pain’s a teacher.”

Jeeny: “It is. It just teaches through cruelty. It strips us of illusions — comfort, control, certainty — until what’s left is the raw truth of being alive.”

Jack: “So suffering is enlightenment now?”

Jeeny: “No. But transformation is. And transformation doesn’t happen without suffering.”

Host: Jack turned from the window and looked at her fully now. The shadows of the rain-soaked city played across his face, softening his sharpness.

Jack: “You ever wonder why? Why some people survive and others collapse under the same weight?”

Jeeny: “Because surviving isn’t about strength. It’s about meaning. If your pain has a purpose, it becomes bearable. If it doesn’t, it consumes you.”

Jack: “Meaning. That word again.” (He chuckled quietly.) “It’s always the philosopher’s morphine.”

Jeeny: “Maybe. But without meaning, all suffering is just noise. Peter Levine saw that — he watched people who were shattered find rhythm again, find beauty in their scars. That’s not delusion. That’s grace.”

Host: The piano music from the apartment next door had shifted — a slow, haunting melody that seemed to mirror their silence. The air felt heavy now, charged not with despair but remembrance.

Jack: “I saw a man once — in Syria. I was covering the aftermath of an airstrike. He’d lost everything — his home, his wife, his son. And yet he smiled at me. Not a happy smile. The kind that said, ‘I’m still here.’ It haunted me.”

Jeeny: “That’s it, Jack. That’s the transformation. Not the kind that makes life pretty again — the kind that makes it real.”

Jack: “You really believe trauma can be beautiful?”

Jeeny: “Not beautiful. Sacred. It’s a wound that doesn’t close but keeps breathing, teaching you what it means to feel without breaking.”

Host: Jack leaned back, his eyes narrowed in thought, the city’s faint hum filling the pause between them. The world outside seemed to hold its breath.

Jack: “You know what I think?”

Jeeny: “Always.” (She smiled.)

Jack: “I think people romanticize pain because they’re terrified of what healing requires — responsibility. It’s easier to say you’re broken than to start rebuilding.”

Jeeny: “But rebuilding isn’t denial. It’s rebellion. Every healed person is a protest against despair.”

Jack: “And what if the world keeps breaking faster than it heals?”

Jeeny: “Then we keep mending anyway. That’s the point.”

Host: Her voice was calm, but there was something fierce underneath — a belief that refused to yield, like a flame that learns to dance in wind instead of dying from it.

Jack: “Levine must’ve seen hell, working with trauma that deep. How does someone not drown in all that pain?”

Jeeny: “Because he looks for the miracle, not the wound. He sees what happens after. That’s what keeps him alive. You think he doesn’t feel the darkness? He does. But he stays because he’s seen light crawl out of it too many times.”

Host: The lamp flickered again, and the room shifted — warm gold turning to soft shadow. Jack rubbed his temples, his voice quieter now, stripped of cynicism.

Jack: “Maybe that’s what I envy. People who can walk into other people’s nightmares and still find redemption there.”

Jeeny: “That’s not envy, Jack. That’s the beginning of empathy.”

Host: Silence. Long, deep, unbroken. The kind that doesn’t need words because truth has already spoken.

Jeeny: “You know what I think trauma is?”

Jack: “What?”

Jeeny: “It’s the soul remembering its own strength.”

Jack: “And what’s healing?”

Jeeny: “Learning to trust that memory again.”

Host: Outside, the first light of dawn crept across the skyline — faint, fragile, but undeniably there. It touched the puddles on the street, turning them to liquid mirrors that reflected something brighter than the night.

Jack stood, walking to the window, his breath fogging the glass.

Jack: “You think that’s what we’re doing, then? All of us — walking through pain, just trying to remember who we were before it?”

Jeeny: “No. Who we’ve become because of it.”

Host: The sun finally broke through — weak, golden, stubborn — casting the room in new color.

Jeeny rose, her face half in shadow, half in light, the line between them as fragile as truth itself.

Jeeny: “Maybe the point isn’t to escape trauma. Maybe it’s to become wise enough to walk others through theirs.”

Host: Jack turned, his voice soft, almost reverent.

Jack: “Then maybe Peter Levine didn’t study pain. Maybe he studied resurrection.”

Jeeny: “Exactly.” (She smiled, tears glinting in her eyes.) “And maybe that’s what healing really is — the art of coming back to life, one breath at a time.”

Host: Outside, the city stirred, and the first train whistled in the distance. The world, newly washed, breathed again.

The lamp went out. But the light stayed.