Personal Justice

I've always been obsessed with justice. As a kid, this made me a bit insufferable (I had big "hall-monitor" energy). As an adult, it led me to law school and a career as a prosecutor and domestic violence attorney. The pursuit of justice became my professional calling, and I did this through the legal system. 

But it was a rare occasion in those systems for justice to be served. At least in the way I saw it. Courts are set up to administer the law - meaning, to apply their authority to the set of facts before them. Judges determine what's true by assessing credibility of witnesses and litigants, weigh the competing equities and interests, and make decisions about what to do. I saw violence survivors go to court with a great deal of trust, bearing their stories of violation and histories of abuse. They expected fairness in the legal process, but they sought something deeper too. They wanted recognition. They wanted the wrongness of what they'd survived to be seen and rectified in some way, by a power that felt larger than themselves. They wanted this outside authority to bring them into reconciliation and make them whole. 

Sometimes, this happened. A very few of my cases invoked a true deliverance of justice. But for the most part, courts offered a regulating kind of experience that at best mitigated some of the harm done. This isn't because courts are bad (though some are), but because they're limited by virtue of being a systemic endeavor. I came to see that justice delivered through the system doesn't speak to what most folks need. 

Justice requires two things: truth and meaning. These are big concepts, and no system can give them to us with the depth we can give them to ourselves. In my therapy work, I call this guiding notion the pursuit of personal justice. 

Personal justice is intimate. It's a long term process of repairing yourself by acknowledging what's harmful and working to heal it. This requires a depth of understanding that comes from taking a rigorous inventory of what's happened in your life, and figuring out what it means. We get to decide what's true for us. We get to make meaning of it. 

This isn't all about blame. To realize the true impact of what's harmed us, we have to learn how we've internalized it and made it a part of how we move through life. The idea of repetition compulsion is vital here. Repetition compulsion is the psychological concept that holds we unconsciously recreate painful situations from our past in some underground attempt by our psyche to conquer them. Being accountable for what we choose and how we act, and taking responsibility for being the only one who can change those things, is the ultimate reclamation. 

For me, personal justice means writing, therapy, and connection. The writing process helps me refine my thoughts and discern significance. Through writing about my experiences, I decide what's important enough to be said, and explain why. In my personal therapy sessions, I get to work through painful experiences - some of my own creation, and some that were inflicted on me. Both of these realms bring me into connection with both myself and others. 

There are things in my life I'll always be working on. There are other things that I've managed to heal. Personal justice is not an easy pursuit. 

It's about finding a reconciled state within yourself.

THIS IS A ROUGH FIRST DRAFT