The diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder also enables a cultural or institutional reframing of domestic abuse. Although the diagnosis is dispensed to individuals, that the diagnosis stems, at least in part, from social interactions—not merely private, individual situations—suggests that “healing” requires change in those social interactions, perhaps all social interactions. Therefore, even though the consequences of domestic abuse are experienced on an individual level more intensely than on a cultural level and the difficulties in achieving literacy goals during or after leaving abuse tend to be experienced by individual learners, these problems cannot be characterized as problems belonging to and resolved by individuals only. It is important to characterize domestic abuse and literacy as simultaneously individual and cultural problems that require simultaneous individual and cultural responses to mitigate. Thus educators, as cultural or institutional figures, should investigate the legacies of domestic abuse on the brain and thus on learning through the consequences of trauma—and I am arguing that domestic abuse and violence are traumatic.