Houses that are no longer habitable, when not demolished by the force of nature, landscapes turned upside down overnight, unusable fields, forests turned into stony ground, businesses brought to their knees by the destruction and death that came suddenly; these are some of the experiences that are characterizing the lives of many people we are seeing these days confronted with the catastrophe that struck the Vallemaggia. Faced with those faces recounted by the testimonies on television, faces weary from late nights, worries and anguish, hollowed out by the pain of the traumatic experience of losing loved ones, animals and things, one stops. One pauses because in those faces is the deep, lacerating human pain that reaches us in its universality and reminds us of our vulnerability. The exceptionality of traumatic events does not lie in their rarity. Traumatic (or potentially so) events in life are there, unfortunately. Sometimes, more than one might expect, even of a different type and different magnitude from what people in our area have experienced these days. 

The traumatogenicity of an event, Judith Herman, a specialist in the field, reminded us, lies in its disrupting a person's normal capacity to adapt. In trauma people feel crushed by what happens to them, they perceive helplessness in the face of the event, they are exposed to an upheaval of their lives and securities. All of this we read in the words of those affected today by last Saturday's cloudburst in the upper Vallemaggia, in the tears of the mayors who with their remaining strength try to keep the community united and hope open, in the words released to Ticinonews by Michele Dalessi who, on the night of the tragedy, tells of seeing stones flying from his window helplessly witnessing the destruction of his village: Fontana in Val Bavona, a village symbolic of what happened. Since that Saturday night, Mr. Dalessi, and with him all his fellow villagers, has been experiencing how the same places that used to represent safety, tranquility and familiarity to him now show another face, sinister and disturbing, generating fear.

Traumatic events are precisely those that bring one into contact with destruction, death, violence and all that are the limits of life; they are events that mark a before and an after in the existence of people and an area, they are facts that put one's back against the wall and make one feel, those who experience them on their skin, powerless, that is, to be literal, with no more possibilities. Victims indeed. "I am afraid," Mr. Dalessi tells us in the Ticinonews interview, "I am afraid to be here," where the "here" is his home, his land, his region. And at the same time he tells us, with the concreteness of the man from the valley, that today it is difficult to take care of the future even though that day when one will return to thinking and imagining it will come.
 
However, now it is necessary to take care of the present, of people, and to manage the immediate things to be done as best we can. The time of trauma is the time of the "blow," the wound on the body and in the soul as in fact the Greek word from which the word is derived means. The blow, sharp, merciless, dramatic came for the whole community of the region, the wounds not only marked the bodies. We have seen, read and heard it well. The world became less predictable and obvious for those who experienced the event on their skin. This is why specialists in listening and welcoming this suffering have been mobilized, which are essential to give the first answers, to stem the sense of loneliness and give form to what no longer seems to have form. It does not end there, however; it will take time, patience, care and listening. But above all, the humanity and community of an entire region, of the entire canton, has been mobilized. The mayors' tears mark pain but, at the same time, speak of human involvement and the need to share, to feel close, to put words to what is happening because words are capable of shaping what has been experienced. Words also make sharing possible, they tell of the wound but at the same time restore the strength that can come out of the wound. The mayors of Cevio and Lavizzara, Wanda Dadò and Gabriele Dazio, showed, with the courage that comes in life's key moments, that one can cry together, that words can stumble, even slip, outclassed by emotion, but then they can be recovered and the speech brought to fruition, as in this moment that one struggles to carry on with everyday life but with everyone's help one will succeed. Those tears tell us that vulnerability and strength can coexist and that community, community-making, recognizing community, is a real asset in times of catastrophe.

The time of reconstruction will come, hope will re-emerge from those stones, but not a consolatory, superficial hope, a passive hope that waits inertly for better times to come. Rather a hope of the dirty hands from the logs piled to clear the roads, of the stones rearranged, the mud removed. For hope is certainly something that projects into the future but it has its feet firmly planted in the present, it is here already now without being noticed in the shared tears that stop the word but, above all, in the word that from the tears re-emerges in stubbornly carrying out what one wants to say. The mayors of the affected municipalities showed us this because in all this destruction there is still life and even more community can be made.

Lorenzo Pezzoli
Psychologist and psychotherapist FSP
Professor in charge of the Center for Applied Psychology SUPSI