Gratitude Story from Melvin Escobar: Growing and Healing from Trauma
In this week’s Season Of Gratitude, EBMC Sangha member and teacher Melvin Escobar shares his experience with the potential to transform trauma through connection in Sangha:
In this week’s Season Of Gratitude, EBMC Sangha member and teacher Melvin Escobar shares his experience with the potential to transform trauma through connection in Sangha:
What’s in your cup? Do you feel like you have enough? Does being part of the EBMC community help fill your cup?
Before arriving at EBMC 10 years ago, I realized that my cup was pretty empty, mostly from many years of being a social worker. I was suffering a lot from compassion fatigue and vicarious trauma.
It wasn’t until I began learning Buddhist teachings that I started to see suffering more clearly and to learn practices to make my work in the world sustainable. What has helped the most has been connecting to others that are doing both the inner and outer work necessary to cultivate healing in the world. Being a part of EBMC has also shown me that my cup is kept full by the mutual generosity of genuine community.
I have been a member of the POC and Alphabet (LGBTQ+) sanghas, served on several EBMC committees, helped manage events, and have helped start the new Latinx Sangha at EBMC. As an EBMC Community Teacher, I am passionate about exploring the concept of Posttraumatic Growth (PTG).
The Buddha’s teachings remind us that life can be traumatic and that there’s a path out of suffering. Posttraumatic Growth emphasizes that we can even grow and heal from trauma. Our traumas don’t have to define who we are; they can serve as reminders of our strength and resilience. And connection, by reminding us that we’re not alone in our suffering, is an essential ingredient for PTG. I continue to experience PTG through my connection to the EBMC community.
What is spiritual home to you? What’s in your cup? How can we use what’s in our cup to continue to grow and sustain EBMC as our spiritual home? Sometimes the only way of knowing what’s in our cup is by giving. It is through a mutuality of giving and receiving that we create a spiritual home that helps us survive and thrive, especially in these challenging times. EBMC’s model of Gift Economics, and specifically the Buddhist practice of Dana, has helped me experience my cup as a wellspring of resources that flow from the teachings.
May we lovingly use what’s in our cups to water freedom, so that all beings may experience the liberation that comes from the refuge of having a spiritual home.
In community,
Melvin Escobar
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Dharma Friends,
Will you join Melvin using what is in your cup to water freedom? At EBMC, our financial model of Gift Economics is only possible through our connection to one another, where all of us give to the extent we are able, at the highest level we can, to support our Sangha as a whole.
Gift Economics takes all of us. Thank you for being a part of this community, where our connection to one another sustains our ability to keep our doors open for all.
