What is Trauma?

Most people assume trauma means experiencing something horrific like rape or witnessing a murder, but it’s more than that. Because we are unique and react to situations differently, what might be traumatic to one person may not be traumatic to the next. Trauma is anything that you can’t seem to move past. Even though we want to just “get over it,” that’s not how it works. My hope for you is not to “get over” the trauma, but to grow with it. This terrible thing that happened to you isn’t fair and can’t be erased. What we really need is help. Help to give the trauma space for healing and growth, to carry it with you in a way that is empowering. There is a lot to be said about how you can grow with your trauma and become stronger and more resilient. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross has a beautiful quote about grief, which I think can be applied to trauma, and it reads:

"The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not 'get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same nor would you want to."

You may not consider the following things traumatic, and it isn’t an exclusive list, but these events can be. Whether you witness it, it happens to you or you hear about it, trauma happens.