This is something nobody seems to be talking about. Can we pause and consider?
Imagine for a moment that you grew up in an environment where the boundaries around your body were not respected. You had little or no say in what happened to your physical body. This could be related to what you ate, who touched you and how they touched you.
Imagine that you grew up in a home with domestic violence and different forms of coercive control. This is 1 in 4 women in Australia.
Imagine that this caused ongoing relational or mental health issues for you as an adult.
Imagine spending years reclaiming sovereignty over your body and creating stability in your life. You have a job that you love and feel relatively safe in your day to day life—a considerable achievement after growing up with little safety.
Imagine being given an ultimatum by the company you work for or the government, saying that vaccination was compulsory, or you would lose your job in an environment where leaving your job was risky.
For some people, getting vaccinated feels like the right thing for them to do, and for other people, as they feel into their body, their body screams ‘no’ just as it did when they were a child.
Leaving them a few options.
- Block out that scream coming from their body saying ‘no’ just as they did when they were a child, which is potentially re-traumatising.
- Leave their job and risk financial instability, which can be incredibly destabilising for anyone.
I hope you can see how this situation can be traumatising for many people whose bodies are telling them not to be vaccinated.
Empathy is the key here. The definition of empathy is to be able to stand in another’s shoes and see the world through their eyes. The call here is for tolerance and not polarisation. The more we can understand one another, the more compassion we can embody as a society. We need empathy and compassion more than ever.
