Marjorie FlorestalThe summer when I was nine years old my mother died, and that was when I decided to become a lawyer. I have friends who suffered a similar loss, but their stories end with the choice to become a doctor. For me, it wasn't my mother's disease I wanted o battle but the deep sense of injustice I felt at losing her. The only people I knew who fought injustice were civil rights lawyers. I wanted to be like them.
No one ever talks about the trauma these lawyers experienced in their quest to make the law live up to its ideals. What must it have been like to bear witness to the lynching of Emmett Till or the bombing death of those four little Black girls in the 16th Street Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama? I was taught to think of these civil rights lawyers as heroes. It wasn't until I became a lawyer that I began to reflect on the price they paid for their heroism. In law school I learned to "think like a lawyer," which I interpreted as a call to suppress emotion and favor logic. When I became a law professor, I passed the same lesson on to my students. One day, a student showed up at my office in tears, and all I could tell her was "let's talk about contract law." I knew then that some- thing in me had to change. I needed to get in touch with the pain of my experiences, and not just the righteous indignation and the desire to fight for change.
It was a 25-year journey to get to this place--and because I am an academic in head and heart, part of the journey included getting advanced degrees in Jungian psychology and human development. My contribution to this book is my academic training in law and trauma as well as the lessons I learned on the journey. One of the most profound lessons is this: there is another way--a better way--to be a lawyer. And it does not require me to suppress any part of myself. I wish the same for you. Marjorie Florestal lives in Sacramento, CA. Read More Read Less