Safety, Solidarity, and Survival in Charlottesville: What Community Healing Means Now

This week marks the anniversary of the August 12, 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.

For many of us—especially Black, Jewish, queer, and disabled community members—it isn’t just a date in the news cycle. It’s a wound. A warning. A reminder of what we already knew: that hate doesn’t need permission, only a platform.

While the national spotlight may have moved on, the emotional and psychological impact of that day lingers. It lives in bodies. In memories. In systems still tilted against us.

Charlottesville carries this grief differently depending on who you are. For some, it's a trauma that added to a lifetime of hypervigilance. For others, it was a first wake-up call. And for many of us, it was both a rupture and a reckoning.

What Is Hypervigilance? Understanding Trauma and Survival Responses

Hypervigilance is the nervous system doing its job—too well, for too long. It’s what happens when your brain has learned that danger is likely and safety is rare. Clinically, we understand this as a state of chronic sympathetic nervous system activation: your body is in fight-or-flight mode, even when no immediate threat is present.

In this state, your heart rate increases, your muscles tense, your digestion slows, and your thoughts may become rapid or tunnel-visioned. It’s not about overreacting—it’s about adapting to survive. For many people living with identity-based trauma, this isn’t a choice. It’s a conditioned response to real, repeated harm.

What’s more, when the sympathetic system is activated, the parasympathetic system—the one responsible for "rest and digest"—is offline. This means that calm, reflection, and creative problem-solving are physiologically less accessible. You’re not lazy or broken for struggling to plan, connect, or even breathe deeply when you’re in a state of alert. Your body is prioritizing survival.

You may still scan for exits. You might tense up during “friendly debates” about politics. You may feel bone-tired from holding your tongue in rooms that don’t feel safe. These aren’t personal failings. These are learned adaptations. They’re how people survive in a world that often gaslights their reality.

And healing from that? It doesn’t look like forgetting.

What Healing Actually Means: How to Recover from Trauma in a Hurting World

Healing doesn’t mean becoming unbothered. It doesn’t mean pretending everything’s fine. At Divergent Path Wellness, we define healing as the capacity to live connected to your values, your community, and your truth—even in an unjust world.

Sometimes healing looks like protest. Sometimes it looks like turning off the news and lying on the floor. Sometimes it’s showing up to therapy. Sometimes it’s setting boundaries with someone who “just wants to play devil’s advocate.”

And sometimes, healing starts with imagining what safety and restoration could feel like—before you even know how to get there. If it feels helpful, try this:

Picture a day of complete rest and rejuvenation. There’s no urgency. No expectation. Just space. What do your surroundings look like? Is there soft light filtering through a window? The smell of something grounding—tea, maybe, or fresh bread? What textures are around you—your favorite hoodie, a blanket, the weight of a pet leaning in?

You might start the day slowly. A warm shower. A meal that actually tastes good. Music that matches your mood. Maybe you move your body in a way that feels like a stretch, not a punishment. Maybe you write, or read, or sit outside and do nothing at all. These are ideas, but what you imagine may not be any of this at all. Whatever it is—let it be for you.

What would it feel like to go an entire day without explaining yourself? Without rushing?

Without consuming more than your body and heart can hold?

Let your nervous system take this in. Even if it’s just for a moment. Notice how that is.

There’s no one right way to heal. But it's worth acknowledging that each of us is part of a whole and our healing is collective.

This Isn’t Just a Charlottesville Story: Community Trauma and Collective Healing

August 12 was devastating—but it wasn’t unique.

Charlottesville made national headlines, but cities across the U.S. have witnessed similar eruptions of hate-fueled violence in the past decade. From Charleston to Pittsburgh, from El Paso to Buffalo, from Kenosha to Atlanta, communities have been shattered by white supremacist violence, anti-Black brutality, antisemitic and anti-immigrant terrorism, and targeted harm against LGBTQIA+ and disabled people.

This isn’t a local issue. It’s a national one. And more than that, it’s a systemic one.

We live in a society with deeply abusive dynamics—where some lives are treated as expendable, some bodies as threats, some truths as too inconvenient to name. That isn’t just a political problem. It’s a mental health one.

Because when our relationships are unhealthy—whether personal or societal—it affects everyone involved. People who are targeted learn to live with fear as a baseline. People who benefit from the status quo often learn to dissociate, minimize, or rationalize.

Nobody comes out unscathed.

Trauma, in this context, isn’t just about what happens to you. It’s about what happens to us.

The harm may not be evenly distributed—but the impact is collective. Racism, ableism, antisemitism, transphobia—these aren’t just issues for the directly targeted. They fracture communities, erode trust, and distort everyone’s understanding of what safety and dignity should look like. The answer to racism is not to center white experiences—but it is important to name that racism damages the humanity of those who uphold it, not just those who are harmed by it.

Healing, then, isn’t just about individual resilience. It’s about how we show up in our communities, how we take responsibility and repair relationships, how we listen to Black and Brown voices, and how we build new systems that support—not sabotage—mental health and human dignity.

Accountability, Privilege, and Repair: On Getting It Wrong and Choosing to Do Better

In 2017, I was a hospital social worker. I volunteered to be called in if needed, but I didn’t truly believe what was coming. Like a lot of people with privilege, I underestimated the threat. I didn’t strategize. I didn’t show up the way my community needed me to.

That was an error.

There are so many ways people turn away from what feels too big or too uncomfortable. Sometimes we dissociate. Sometimes we minimize. Sometimes we tell ourselves someone else will handle it. These are human defenses—and they’re also part of the problem.

If you've ever looked away, or wished things weren’t as bad as they are, or only stepped in once the damage was done: this isn’t a call-out. It’s an invitation.

We can all choose to do things differently. You can wish you'd done things differently, but being stuck there helps no one. Today is a good day to start.

Community Care Isn’t a Buzzword—It’s a Lifeline

At Divergent Path Wellness, we ground our care in the same values we bring to community life. We take a liberation-oriented approach to mental health—centering autonomy, justice, and the belief that healing is intertwined with collective well-being.

We’re a queer- and neurodiversity-affirming therapy practice, deeply rooted in anti-oppressive care. Many of our clinicians have lived experience in the communities we serve. We’re not neutral. We’re not detached. We’re here to walk alongside you.

We also support:

• Affinity groups for LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent adults

• Training for providers in trauma-informed, anti-racist, affirming care

• Collaboration with local organizations working toward systemic change

If You’re Feeling Raw This Week—You’re Not Alone

You don’t have to perform resilience. You’re allowed to be tender. You’re allowed to be angry. You’re allowed to be tired of being the “educator” in your circles. And you’re allowed to take a break from fighting, too.

One way to offer yourself tenderness this week might be something deceptively simple: placing your hand on your chest, feeling your breath, and reminding yourself, "This is hard—and I’m still here." You might journal without editing, take a walk without a destination, or hold a warm mug in both hands and just notice the weight of it. These small, embodied acts of care matter.

Whether you feel called to speak out or stay quiet, both are valid. What matters is that your choices align with your needs—not someone else’s comfort.

An Invitation to Act—or to Rest

If you’re looking for ways to take action, we invite you to:

• Support local mutual aid efforts

• Donate to organizations led by Black, Jewish, and disabled community members

• Start therapy or join a group space that centers your identity

And if what you need is rest, we invite you to:

• Step back from social media

• Reconnect with safe people and spaces

• Remember that rest is resistance, too

Our Charlottesville community continues to grieve, to wrestle, and to feel the impact of what happened here on August 12. That grief is not a thing of the past. It’s ongoing, and it matters. And across the U.S., we are each called to do the same: to sit with the discomfort that can move us toward action. To reflect, not deflect. To witness, not withdraw.

This moment calls for collective imagining—and a willingness to keep doing the unfinished work. As Langston Hughes wrote, long before contemporary artists picked up the thread in their own mediums, the American ideal has always been contested space—one that demands both critique and hope:

“O, let America be America again— The land that never has been yet— And yet must be—the land where every man is free.”

However you mark this week, we see you. We believe you. And we’re here.

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Want to connect with a liberation-oriented therapist? Schedule a 15-minute consultation to explore support rooted in your lived experience, your values, and your right to thrive. Serving adults and teens across Virginia.