Trauma studies in rhetoric and composition exists at an intersection where we are now willing to engage seriously with the contributions it’s made in the field while rarely engaging seriously with scholars who are re-experiencing their own trauma by making those contributions to the field. Scholars have already engaged with the complicated nature of the trauma narrative. According to Rosemary Winslow, for instance, the “[e]vents [of a trauma narrative may look fragmented and experience of them may look fragmented from the perspective of the everyday world” (609). We know, then, that engaging with the trauma narrative necessitates a new way of thinking. As Winslow says “To understand trauma narratives, then, we have to look inside, not just for facts of events but for the language that binds meaning and significance to them” (609). But what are we to do when encountering the colleague who is authoring these trauma narratives? What responsibility do we have for those around us, composing these trauma narratives?

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Using our own traumatic backgrounds as a starting place to interrogate the relationship between the body, composition, and trauma, we hope to propose a methodology through practice that aims to offer an example to support fellow colleagues when their own trauma composes them.