emotional blind spots

What kind of lunatic would come back here once he'd escaped?  There were now so many pink and yellow specks in my vision, it was as if I were inside a snow globe.
~ Tara Westover; Educated

We are empathic to survivors of trauma we can see; to war vets who have witnessed the slaying of comrades, policemen who have found strewn corpses in a murder scene, survivors of acts of terrorism on the ground or in the sky. We feel for them and understand how the pain of regurgitated memories can prick and ruin the surface of ordinary life.

But it is harder to feel for those whose trauma is inscribed in the folds of the unconscious or in the collective body of previous generations.  We fail to understand how sexual abuse (no matter how "small") can permanently move the boundary between self and other, or how African Americans, Native Americans, women and Jews can still be impacted by the horror visited upon their ancestors. 

Violations of the soul lead to blind spots where a boundary used to be.  Erased, it exists no longer, opening the pathway to re-victimization like an open door calling: "Come in."  Because there is no skin there, it will always hurt when someone crosses over, and be frightening even when someone is just standing at the threshold.  The echo of footsteps is louder than what can be heard, like the sound of gunshots.