From Trauma to Triumph: My Journey Through Community Service
Life can often resemble a series of unforgiving waves crashing upon the shores of our existence. For some, like myself, these waves began early in life and left scars that would shape my interactions and beliefs for decades. Growing up as a traumatized child and young boy, I grappled with social skills, anxiety, and bullying, both at school and at home. Yet, it wasn’t until a life-threatening illness at age 68 that I found the true essence of fulfillment through community service.
My childhood was anything but ordinary. Social skills were a constant struggle, and anxiety was an unwelcome companion, lurking in the shadows of my mind long before I understood what it was. Bullying at school and by my older sister at home added layers to my trauma. Despite my efforts to be a good person, I often found myself isolated and misunderstood.
Boy Scouts was a beacon of hope, offering structure and goals through merit badges. One badge required community service. But the idea of giving back felt like an abomination. I had already endured enough, I thought, and refused to participate. Little did I know that this resistance would linger for decades, shaping my reluctance to serve the larger community.
Fast forward 55 years later, and I was a 68-year-old man who had fulfilled his obligations to family and employment but had never extended a hand to his community. Then, five months ago, I was struck by sepsis. The illness ravaged my body, and as I felt myself deteriorating, memories of Boy Scouts surfaced. In that moment of vulnerability, I made a conscious decision to be willing to serve the larger community.
Joining the Trauma Intervention Program (TIP) was my first step towards this newfound purpose. TIP offers support to individuals in spiritual need due to the death of a loved one. Initially, I was apprehensive, uncertain if I had anything to offer. But as I engaged with those in need, I found incredible fulfillment. Each interaction was not just about providing comfort but also about healing parts of myself that had long been neglected.
My aversion to community service was deeply rooted in my past traumas. It wasn’t just about refusing to give back; it was a defense mechanism, a way to protect myself from further emotional harm. But my illness forced me to confront these beliefs head-on. Volunteering for TIP was a revelation. It showed me that giving back wasn’t draining; it was enriching. It wasn’t about losing something; it was about gaining a sense of purpose and community.
The rewards of volunteer work are manifold. For those we help, it provides immediate relief and support during their most challenging times. For volunteers, it offers a sense of purpose, fulfillment, and even healing. Programs like TIP provide a structured way to give back, making it easier to overcome initial apprehensions. Each act of service becomes a step towards personal growth and societal contribution.
Community service is not just beneficial for those who receive aid; it profoundly impacts the giver. It transforms lives, fosters a sense of belonging, and offers a unique avenue for personal growth. For trauma survivors, it can be a path to healing, a way to turn past pain into present purpose. For Baby Boomers, it provides an opportunity to contribute wisdom and experience to younger generations. And for community service supporters, it reinforces the value of collective effort in making the world a better place.
My journey from a traumatized child who refused community service to a fulfilled volunteer at TIP has been nothing short of transformational. It took a life-threatening illness to catalyze this change, but the rewards have been immense. Community service has not only allowed me to give back but also to heal and find a deeper sense of purpose.
If my story resonates with you, I encourage you to explore opportunities for community service in your area. Join programs like TIP, volunteer at local shelters, or simply offer a helping hand to a neighbor in need. The impact will be profound, not just for those you help, but for yourself as well.
Take that first step today. You never know how it might change your life.
A Beacon in the Darkest Times: A Tribute to the Trauma Intervention Program
In a world that often feels like it’s spinning out of control, where traumatic events seem to be a constant fixture in the news cycle, the existence of a beacon of hope like the Trauma Intervention Program (TIP) is not just comforting—it’s essential. Founded in 1985 by Wayne Fortin in San Diego, California, and introduced to Portland, Oregon, in 1992 by June Vining, TIP embodies the essence of compassion, support, and healing. My journey of healing and rediscovery intertwines deeply with the principles and values this remarkable volunteer organization upholds, granting me a unique perspective on its undeniable impact.
The Trauma Intervention Program is not the option for trauma victims who are negatively responding to events from a distant past. TIP’s unique approach is to offer immediate emotional first aid and pragmatic support to those ravaged by today’s traumatic events, giving a vital lifeline to those survivors. TIP is not just about the individual acts of kindness by its volunteers as contributors with the other first responders to life’s tragedies, like the police and fire departments, the EMTs’ ‘s, and the hospital employees. This organization is also about a profound commitment to emotional healing and honoring the resilience of survivors in the face of their adversity.
At the heart of TIP are its volunteers who selflessly dedicate their time, energy, and empathy to assist those in despair. Their volunteers stand on the front lines, providing a shoulder to lean on when the unimaginable happens. This silent army of compassionate souls forms the backbone of TIP, embodying the purest form of altruism. Their readiness to be present, listen, and offer solace makes TIP’s work not just necessary but extraordinary. The volunteers’ ability to hold space for those in distress is a testament to the organization’s ethos—offering a glimmer of hope amidst sorrow.
One of my recurring observations, penned across years of self-reflection, writing, and observing our world is our culture’s pervasive aversion to confronting the sources of trauma within itself. This avoidance not only perpetuates unnecessary suffering but often exacerbates the trauma. TIP’s mission is a clarion call for a shift toward emotional awareness and healing. By fostering a culture that prioritizes these values, we can prevent countless instances of needless trauma and reduce the incidence of secondary injury trauma induced by untrained or unconscious responses to others’ adverse life experiences.
The inexorable truth is that trauma, in its myriad forms, will continue to be a part of the human experience. However, organizations like TIP offer a blueprint for compassion and resilience that can profoundly impact individuals and communities. It’s not enough to applaud their work from the sidelines; it requires a collective commitment to support and invest in programs that embody such critical missions, such as the Dougy Center, and other worthy services. In doing so, we aid those in immediate need and nurture a societal framework that values healing and recovery.
My connection to trauma and the eventual path to recovery began on a day etched in collective memory—January 28, 1986—the day the Challenger spaceship tragically exploded. That catastrophe mirrored my internal turmoil, leading me to a nadir where I attempted to take my own life. Thankfully, I survived, but the incident ushered me into a labyrinthine several-decade quest for truth and healing, revealing deep-seated wounds from my childhood. These scars, long embedded in my body and psyche, had sapped the very essence of joy and purpose from my existence. Because of traumatic wounding, all that I wanted for myself prior to my suicide attempt was “to get off of this fucking rock.”
Only through confronting and healing these wounds did I discover a newfound capacity to live in a healed and whole state while being more present for others, even those experiencing their darkest days. My evolution from a survivor of trauma to a volunteer reflects the transformative power of healing from traumatic wounding, and the substance of my story is not unique within the corps of TIP’s volunteers.
The Trauma Intervention Program is more than an organization; it’s a testament to the indomitable spirit of compassion that resides within each of us. My path from despair to healing, and eventually to serving others, mirrors the journey many volunteers and those they support undertake—a passage from darkness into light, guided by empathy and a shared resolve to heal. I urge communities everywhere to rally behind TIP and similar initiatives, recognizing their indispensable role in weaving the fabric of a more compassionate, resilient society. Our support for all initiatives to reduce suffering, be it through volunteering, advocacy, or funding, not only enhances or saves lives but also fortifies the collective soul of our communities.
On the most troubling day of my life, January 28, 1986, I had no one to listen to and meet me where I was, both emotionally and spiritually. I had an acquaintance who stood in the same pharmacy line as I was tell me that he had no time to listen to me and my problems. I was there to pick up what was to be my “final prescription”.Had that acquaintance been able to listen and be emotionally present for me, I may have changed my mind about self-harm, but he could only turn away. It is no wonder that our society often maintains a conspiracy of silence around the suffering of others, as many cannot deal with their own pain. Our culture and many of our citizens can be poor listeners, and it is no wonder that up to 95% of all trauma survivors have never developed a narrative around their losses nor could find anyone to share it with even if they did.
TIP, though not a suicide prevention service, is here to listen to those who lost family members or friends to death, for those whose rugs of love, safety, and security have been yanked out from under them. TIP offers short-term help to assist the survivor to regain a measure of control over their trauma destabilized life.
TIP is here for people having the worst day of their lives.
TIP listens, supports, and cares.
So can we.
The Trauma Intervention Program: Love Organized Into Response
I did not come to this work theoretically.
I came to it the way most people come to the things that ultimately matter: through suffering, through a brush with death, and through the slow recognition that the life I had been living—one already marked by decades of sitting with others in their pain—was being called toward something deeper still.
Let me be honest about who I was before TIP. I was a man who had grown up traumatized—bullied at school, wounded at home—and yet, perhaps because of this, never entirely able to turn away from the suffering of others. I had spent much of my adult life in proximity to those who were diseased, dying, mentally ill, or otherwise drowning in circumstances that most people prefer not to witness. Within my family and beyond it, I had kept vigil. I had sat in rooms where hope was running thin. I knew, at least in part, what it meant to be present to grief.
What I had not done—and this is the admission that matters—was extend that same presence outward to my broader community in any organized or deliberate way. When the Boy Scouts required community service as a condition of earning a merit badge, I refused. That refusal as a twelve year old boy, I can see now, was not born of indifference to suffering. It was born of a boy who had already absorbed more than his share of it and had not yet learned to distinguish between the suffering that depletes and the service that restores. The refusal felt like self-preservation at the time. Looking back, it was a confusion that would take decades to resolve.
Fifty-five years passed. I fulfilled my obligations to my family and my employers. I was not a man who withheld care from those close to him—I gave it, often at considerable cost to myself. But the formalized offering of that care to strangers, through institutions built specifically for that purpose, remained a threshold I had not crossed. And I had constructed, if not an elaborate justification, then at least an unexamined omission—a gap I had never fully confronted.
Then, in 2023, I became extremely ill with sepsis, a variation on the type of infection that caused the death of my mother in 2009.
Sepsis isn’t some lofty, philosophical moment while it’s happening—it’s raw and punishing, the body staging what feels like its last rebellion. As I lay fading, an odd memory bubbled up: the Boy Scout community service badge I’d dodged as a kid, and the face of our leader telling us that giving wasn’t losing something, but gaining. I think I understood him back then, but I wasn’t ready to live it out in that way. Flat on my back, shaking, feverish, and in agony, something inside me stirred, and I was finally ready to bridge that old gap.
Among the organizations that have most honestly confronted what sudden death requires of the living, the Trauma Intervention Program stands as a particular and remarkable example.
Founded in 1985 by Wayne Fortin in San Diego, California, and brought to Portland, Oregon, in 1992 by June Vining, TIP was built around a deceptively simple recognition: that the moment of acute crisis—the hours immediately following a traumatic event—is precisely the moment when most support systems are least available. Police officers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, hospital staff—these first responders are essential. But their training is not in emotional first aid. Their role is not to sit with a grieving mother on a front porch at 2 a.m. and receive whatever she needs to say about her son.
TIP volunteers fill this gap. They arrive not as experts in grief, not as representatives of particular religious traditions, not as therapists or counselors, but as fellow human beings willing to be present during moments that most people prefer not to witness.
I am one of those volunteers now. And while much in my prior life had prepared me to witness suffering, nothing had quite prepared me for what I found in this particular form of it.
When I joined TIP after my recovery from sepsis, my apprehension was not whether I could bear another person’s pain. I had borne it before—in hospitals, in family homes, in the slow erosion of watching someone you love diminish. My apprehension was more specific: whether what I knew how to offer in intimate or familial contexts could translate into something useful for strangers, on the worst night of their lives, within the particular structure that TIP requires.
The training prepares you as much as any training can. But the first time you sit with a family in the immediate aftermath of a sudden death—the air in the room still holding the shape of the person who is no longer in it, the family members moving through shock as though through deep water—you discover that each instance of grief is entirely its own. Familiar in its broad dimensions, irreducibly singular in its particulars.
What the work requires, I have come to understand with renewed clarity, is the willingness to feel each instance freshly. Not to meet a family’s grief with the accumulated competence of someone who has done this before, but to receive this grief, this family, this particular shape of loss, as though it were the only one that has ever existed. The mind wants to help in ways that are really about organizing and contextualizing—to offer the explanations and reframings that experience makes available. TIP’s training asks for something more demanding: the discipline of setting that accumulated experience aside and simply being present, without the mediating filter of expertise. The art of holding space without imposing interpretation. Of listening without fixing.
There is a moment that recurs in this work, and I want to describe it as precisely as I can, because it is the moment that contains everything.
It is the moment when the deceased is transported from the scene—to the funeral home, to the morgue. For many families, this is the last opportunity to be physically near the person they loved before the formal processes of death take over. The institutional world, with its timelines and procedures, presses in. And there, at that threshold, is where a TIP volunteer stands.
What I have learned to do in that moment is almost nothing. I do not fill the silence with reassurance. I do not redirect the family’s attention toward the practical next steps. I stay. I witness the particular shape of this family’s grief, which is never generic, never interchangeable with any other family’s grief. I receive it. And in receiving it—without judgment, without the need to make it more comfortable for myself—I offer what our culture almost never offers its grieving members: the confirmation that their suffering is seen.
This confirmation matters more than most people understand until they have experienced its absence at the precise moment they needed its presence. On January 28, 1986—the day the Challenger exploded, the day I experienced my own internal catastrophe mirroring that public one—I stood in a pharmacy line in the wreckage of myself, and an acquaintance told me he had no time to listen to my problems. I was there to pick up what was intended to be my final prescription. Had that acquaintance been able to stop—to simply stop, and be present, and receive whatever I needed to say—I may have walked out of that pharmacy with a different intention.
He could not. And I do not judge him for it, because our culture systematically fails to teach us how. The conspiracy of silence around other people’s suffering is not a moral failing in the individuals who participate in it; it is the natural result of a society in which most people have never found a way to be present to their own pain, and therefore cannot be present to anyone else’s. Research suggests that up to 95% of trauma survivors have never developed a coherent narrative around their losses—and have never found anyone willing to receive such a narrative even if they had.
TIP exists to interrupt that pattern. Not permanently, not comprehensively—the longer work of healing belongs to other processes and other time—but at the precise moment when the interruption matters most: in the immediate aftermath, when the wound is fresh and the isolation would otherwise be total.
To take the path of genuine healing seriously—as I have, across decades that included my own descent into crisis and the slow, nonlinear work of climbing back—is to discover something that deepens rather than resolves with time: that the more honestly you have faced your own suffering, the more permeable you become to the suffering around you.
This permeability is not new to me. It has been present, in various forms, throughout my life—in the rooms of the dying, in the company of those whose minds had turned against them, in the long vigils that family and circumstance require of those who do not look away. What TIP offered was not the awakening of a capacity I lacked, but the channeling of one I had long carried into a form that could be offered systematically, to strangers, on the very night they needed it most.
Compassion that remains entirely interior—that does not organize itself into action, into the patient and often invisible work of sitting with people who are suffering—is not yet complete. It is, as someone once said to me, the diagram of compassion rather than its practice. I had spent years living in proximity to that diagram. TIP gave me a specific and structured practice to inhabit it more fully.
And the practice, in ways I did not anticipate, gave me back something I had not realized I was missing: the particular quality of purpose that comes not from caring for those you are obligated to care for, but from extending that same quality of presence to strangers who have no prior claim on you—and finding, in that extension, that your presence matters in ways that obligation alone cannot produce.
That turns out to be enough. In fact, it turns out to be more than enough.
The finite is beautiful precisely because of its impermanence. Every encounter occurs once, in exactly the form it takes, and then is permanently complete. To be present in someone’s worst moment—genuinely, undefendedly present—is among the most powerful forms of love available to a human being.
TIP listens, supports, and cares.
So can we all. And if my story suggests anything, it is this: you do not need to be a stranger to suffering before you can be useful to someone else’s. You need only to have stayed present to it long enough—in whatever forms life has offered it to you—to understand that the willingness to remain, when everything in the room is telling you to leave, is itself a form of grace.
