Saturday, September 18, 2010

You Have to Accept that It's Going to Take a Long Time

Psychologist Sandrine Kenol works with Mercy Corps doing mental health care in Port-au-Prince. She says:
People are only now starting to accept their loss. There has been a lot of denial. Also in Haiti, activities started really early after the earthquake. The earthquake happened on Tuesday, January 12, and by the next Monday the city and the marketplaces started back up again. Everyone started working really soon after the earthquake and I think that was part of the denial. Because people were shocked, but still they had to live, and they had to find something to keep them from thinking about what had happened. But even today you have evidence of what happened. You have rubble everywhere.

It's taking a long time for all of us to recover, but it's normal. Even for me, in January, I was expecting that in the summer, everything would be normal again. And now I am starting to accept that it’s going to take a long time. I’m starting to understand why it takes a long time, and I’m starting to accept that it’s not going to be easy. I think a lot of people were discouraged at first but when you see the amount of work that has to be done, you have to accept that it’s going to take a long time. And do what you can.


Here's the rest of this excellent article.

1 comment:

Sarah SSM said...

Thank you for sharing this. If I am organized enough, I hope you won't mind if I do the same. It's a good article and an important topic.

I think it will take time for people to begin to deal with this level of trauma. To cope, most have to shut down to some extent, I think. And then let it come back slowly...