They say “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

Yet, one must admit there are photographs that record history. And those that change it. There may be some worth a thousand words, but the picture attached here makes me go silent. And because America struggles to deal with its traumatic history, we prefer to hide it, rather than to deal with it. I see this kind of stuffing of feelings and saying “I’m good, I’m chill. Let the past be the past.” As another client leaves my office afraid to look deep inside.

That’s the story of America. That’s the story of this picture.

The man in this photograph is Peter (originally called in print “Gordon”,) an escaped enslaved man who reached Union lines in Louisiana in 1863. When military doctors examined him, they photographed the thick web of scars covering his back, the result of repeated whippings during slavery. The image “went viral” for the time, spreading throughout the Union North. For many Americans, slavery had been an argument. A political disagreement. A distant abstraction.

Then they saw Peter’s back.

One photograph accomplished what thousands of speeches could not. It made suffering impossible to dismiss.

Sometimes history needs witnesses more than words. Sometimes witnessing means be willing to see things that are difficult to see. And it takes great courage to do so.

I have always loved America. Well, I’ve loved the ideals of America. That’s why I refuse to confuse patriotism with amnesia.

Every therapist knows something that every nation eventually has to learn.

Healing doesn’t begin when we forget. Healing begins when we finally stop editing or ignoring our own story.

A child is abused. A parent denies that history. The cycle continues. What is the cycle? Generational violence. Parent abuses child. Parent feels regret and tries to make things better with the child. Without healing, the parent is soon back to the abuse. That child is very likely to one day abuse their own children. And generationally the cycle continues. Abuse. Emotional terrorizing. Violence.

If a person doesn’t heal, they are likely doomed to repeat the traumatic parenting that was inflicted upon them. The past has a remarkable way of surviving inside us when we refuse to acknowledge it.

Nations work much the same way. Or as said by philosopher George Santayana:

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

After the Civil War, many wanted to forget the past and move on. The same is happening today. The gritty parts of our history are being whitewashed. Even the picture of Peter was, at one point, tagged by the Trump Administration for removal from America’s museums and history books in Florida.

Hey, it’s understandable that every generation wrestles with which parts of history to remember, how to teach them, and whether certain truths make us “too uncomfortable.” Those conversations matter. But we might be asking the wrong question.

A therapist doesn’t ask: “Does remembering make us uncomfortable?”

No, the therapist asks: “Would you like to heal from the memories?”

Because there can be no healing without a willingness to remember. And that unwillingness requires a desire to maintain a status quo that is not yet painful enough to want to change. And history has shown that an empire unwilling to remember and confront its painful past may soon come to the end of its imperial reign.

Can we heal from a history we’re unwilling to remember honestly?

As therapists, we already know the answer. That’s a “No.” In fact, that’s a “Hell No!”

I have always loved America. Well, I’ve loved the ideals of America.

That’s why I refuse to confuse patriotism with amnesia.

Yes, America has done exceptional things: the moon landing, invention of the telephone. Even the Declaration of Independence itself was such a crazy idea it cost the signers of it dearly. But I wonder if we can continue to be “exceptional” – or I might say “Great Again”, if we’re unwilling to remember the times we fell massively short of our ideals.:

Black men treated like Peter.

The Trail of Tears.

Japanese American incarceration during World War II.

The Chinese Exclusion Act.

The St. Louis, carrying hundreds of Jewish refugees who were turned away from our shores and many of whose passengers later perished in Europe.

The invasion of Iraq despite our government knowing for a fact that Iraq was NOT involved in 9/11 and DID NOT have weapons of mass destruction. Leading to the deaths of 300,000+ innocent Iraqi civilians.

That doesn’t necessarily make America uniquely evil. I could list horrifying moments of other nations, as well. Every nation has chapters it would rather skip. But healthy people don’t become healthier by pretending painful memories never happened. Healthy families don’t heal by rewriting the past. And healthy nations don’t become more patriotic by editing history until it flatters them.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from a Birmingham jail that he was disappointed not only by open segregationists, but by those who preferred comfort and order over confronting injustice. His challenge wasn’t simply about racism. It was about the temptation to mistake the absence of tension for the presence of healing.

Therapists know the difference.

Avoiding pain is not the same thing as resolving it. Silence is not the same thing as peace.

Once again, remember the warning: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Perhaps another way to say it is this: When we forget the spirit of our history, we often end up recreating it. When we ignore our negative moments in history, fear will drive us to commit the same immoral acts all over again:

The genocide of the indigenous.

The meddling in the economies and politics of our neighboring countries which has left many of their citizens with no choice to make absolutely impossible treks to our southern border – hoping to get paid next to nothing, treated terribly – in exchange for empowering the American economy and being able to give their family some food and a chance at a better life.

The waterboarding at Guantanamo.

Heck, America is the only country in world history to ever detonate an atomic bomb in populated areas. And it’s fairly inarguable that, at least the second bomb, was unnecessary.

You see, we may not overtly state we are repeating history. Like a client in my office, we may not even realize we are doing so. But the trauma and violence seems a temporary solution when we have not been healed from the trauma and violence of our past.

And we become the bully – angry and scary on the outside, but just a terrified and angry little boy on the inside. That’s America in a nutshell today: An angry, terrified little boy needing desperately to feel safe and valued.

That value can come through healing and self actualization. Or it can come through unknowingly repeating the unhealthy acts of the past. Our old instincts kick in. Can we go back to that time when we felt “great.” It doesn’t matter that “greatness” was had at a time when black people were treated as second and third class citizens (or worse,) women were considered property of men – to be beaten, or muted with Xanex, or both in actions that would cause the neighbors to say “that’s their business.”

We begin to decide again who belongs. Who doesn’t.

Whose suffering matters. Whose suffering can be ignored or explained away.

History rarely repeats itself word for word. But it has a way of repeating its patterns. All because a country is too cowardly to face with humility and honesty its true past.

I want my country to always strive to be better than our past. And becoming better begins with telling the truth.

That’s true in therapy. It’s true in families. It’s true in elections. It’s true in global relations. And I believe it’s true in patriotism.

Loving your country doesn’t mean pretending it’s flawless and above reproach in some effort to feel “Great Again.” It means caring enough to recognize pain we’ve caused to humans in the past, so true healing can begin.

Healing always begins where denial ends.

Final Editorial Note:

The picture of Peter was originally called “the whipped slave” or “the Scourged Back.” I even found historical sites that said this man’s name was Gordon. But the Smithsonian said the man was actually “Peter” and Gordon was a name placed on the photo by Harper’s Bazaar Magazine for reasons we do not know. So I want to honor Peter by using his name – as best I can know it – by which he deserves to be recognized. Slavery was something done to Peter. But he is more than a slave, or a bunch of scars on a back. Apparently, the way the Smithsonian was able to find Peter’s real name was through military records. After escaping slavery, Gordon fought in the Civil War wearing Union blue.

This ought to remind us that history is about people, not just events.