Chapter TBA — The Power of Trauma Bonding
If there was one force that bound the parents in the Vaxxed movement together, it was trauma bonding. Most had never heard the term, yet they were living examples of it. Trauma bonding is the psychological glue that forms between people who share extreme emotional experiences — especially when those experiences involve loss, injustice, and deep personal pain. It’s not just empathy; it’s a visceral connection that can override logic, blind judgment, and cement lifelong loyalty.
In our world, the trauma was our children — their sudden regression, their permanent injuries, their stolen futures. The bond was forged in the sleepless nights, the hospital visits, the haunting flashbacks of the day everything changed. When we met each other, we didn’t have to explain. We could see the same grief in each other’s eyes. We didn’t need small talk; the pain itself was the introduction.
The Vaxxed team understood this — whether consciously or by instinct — and they knew how to harness it. The events were engineered for maximum emotional resonance. Parents were invited to tell their stories on camera, often in raw, unfiltered detail. Tears flowed freely, and the cameras kept rolling. One by one, people would line up to sign the bus — each name a public declaration of loss, each Sharpie stroke a scar on the movement’s collective heart.
Del Bigtree and Polly Tommy moved through these gatherings like a conductor in an orchestra of grief. He knew when to put a comforting hand on a shoulder, when to lean in close, when to draw out the most heartbreaking detail of a parent’s testimony. The crowd would tighten around him, cameras flashing, as though proximity to him somehow meant their story would be heard — that their pain would finally matter.
The result was intoxicating. People left those events feeling not just validated but galvanized. They weren’t just supporters; they were soldiers in a cause. But the danger of trauma bonding is that it can be manipulated. It creates fierce loyalty, but it can also be used to rally people behind an agenda that doesn’t fully serve their best interests.
I didn’t see it all at once. At the time, I believed I was helping amplify their mission, and they were amplifying mine. But as the months passed, I would begin to realize that while I was there to end the 1986 Vaccine Injury Protection Act, their goals were much broader — and far less likely to lead to real change.
