August 2021

This is the foreword for Trauma-Informed Pedagogies: A Guide for Responding to Crisis and Inequality in Higher Education written by Dr. Quiros.

I try to take my vacation every year during the second week in August, the week of my birthday. It is my designated time to take a break and reconnect with nature and my family. I strive to make it the one week a year where I unplug. This year was significant because it was the first birthday without my mom. My mom passed away on June 16, 2021, quite unexpectedly. I pushed through the months of June and July, busier than planned with speaking engagements, facilitation sessions, and trainings. I coped with her loss through avoidance and by immersing myself in my work; holding space for others felt healing, while I also recognized that it was a way for me to dissociate. But when August 8th came and we were scheduled to leave the familiar surroundings of our home and venture out to big skies, wide plains, and the ocean, I had to prepare for the grief work that was inevitably coming and for the healing that the ocean brings every time I touch the sand. My mom’s passing reminded me that trauma and the grief that accompanies it hit us in unpredictable waves. The sounds, smells, sights, and felt spiritual energies surprise us with their appearance. This time around I let it. I did not reach for a tissue when the waves of grief hit me in the middle of the drive, or when my tears matched the heavy rain that fell the morning of my birthday August 9th, and I did not stop calling her name as I sat under the stars and felt her presence in the night sky. My children saw and felt my loss and that, too, was ok. I accepted their hugs and held onto them tighter and longer than usual. August 9th was also the day I received an email from the co-editors of this book asking me to write this foreword. The email was a beautiful invitation to share space with so many incredible authors and educators who also are working to disrupt the traditional space of trauma work, all of us using ourselves, our platforms, and our research to highlight the need for equity centered trauma-informed approaches. In addition to the invitation, the email was flooded with words sharing the impact that my work on incorporating diversity and inclusion into trauma-informed practice and leadership and my recent book Incorporating Diversity and Inclusion in Trauma-Informed Social Work has had on others in and outside of the trauma field and across disciplines. I interpreted this invitation as a gift, a gift that validated my higher order purpose to positively disrupt and build a practice that is centered on belonging, a practice that moves the focus from individual deficit to the impact systems of oppression have on the individual, a practice that shares stories and collective experiences of intergenerational trauma and how that trauma has laid heavy on generations, often times impacting mental health. My mom lived a life of intergenerational trauma and was also a healer. I learned, in the weeks after her passing, of all the work she had done with communities of color, specifically youth. I also learned more about the impact she had on young women educators in the K-12 space. And so, in addition to the intergenerational traumas of my family, I also carry on the legacy of what it means to be a healer. I have thought deeply about what I have inherited and what I chose to hold on to and what I must let go of in order to live in my essence and do the work that I am here to do. I did this through my own personal work and also through connection and community. I talk about the importance of the practice principle of use of self in trauma-informed work, that is, sharing personal experiences from the place of intention and with the mindfulness of building a community of healers who are courageous enough to disrupt systems and spaces of oppression and exclusion in everyday practice. This book is a gift to all of us who strive to create communities of belonging where trauma is normalized, named, and understood in the larger context of systems of oppression. I encourage you to write in the margins of this book, sit in quiet spaces of accountability, build a collective of healers, challenge yourself to be courageous, spend time in gratitude and continue to cultivate beauty.