At the End of the Tunnel, We Must See the Light: Moving From a Dark Place in the Past (Trauma and Loss) to a Bright, Shiny and Hopeful Time (Memory and Redress)

This essay represents my process of thinking, rethinking, and assessing trauma and loss from my "I" as a woman who grew up during a dictatorship, as a scholar today in a Chilean public university. Feeling and listening is a form of creating knowledge in the process of studying trauma in Chilean former political prisoners of Pinochet's regime. I start this essay by thinking about past and static concepts of trauma and loss that were developed in a present and living "thing" that I cannot separate to Memory and Redress. Story telling, dreams, and short stories in a performative text shape this essay to seek shared feelings, experiences, and ideas about trauma and loss, today, and to encourage readers to action. My feelings are identified as part of this "thing" popularly called trauma, which is understood as my own personal construction about some aspects of these events during Pinochet's regime.