This post is on TRAUMA by Dr Rebecca Moore, Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist. She is co-founder of @birthbetter and can also be found at doctorrebeccamoore.com. Thank you for sharing your wise words Rebecca ?

“Trauma is a much used word. Something many of us feel, or maybe we don’t resonate with that word. We may feel trauma but not know how to name it; not feel traumatised enough; sweep our distress into a box and try to shut it down. We may feel trauma in our minds, bodies and soul.

Most of us through our lifetime experience big, shocking, difficult and sudden events. And increasingly we are all flooded with other traumatic scenes, images and news daily in a way that we would never have witnessed 20 years ago. Social media provides a non-stop wave of distressing videos and imagery that seeps in.

At the same time medical services are increasingly and rightly highlighting the need to be trauma aware and informed.

But what does that actually mean? How do we do that? I could write a hundred posts on this and not do it justice.

But just a reminder: your trauma is yours. How you feel is yours. How you hold your trauma is yours. Call it trauma or don’t. Use your words, your language, your terms, your timeline.

You are the only expert of you.

Those you share stories with, some will get it and make you feel safe. Maybe you share with words, art, music or movement.

Others won’t hear you or see you, I am so sorry of that happens to you, but that is the truth of this world sometimes.

What is most important is that we can all be trauma-informed, no medical degree is needed and often doctors are woefully trauma-uninformed. Start by knowing that to listen hard, to be kind, to offer time and not judgement, to turn up and show up and stay, that is trauma-informed care right there. So when you sit with a new mum, your friend with chronic pain, or a colleague after baby loss, or your kids after bullying and you offer these moments we are all building a trauma-informed path. We build from changes with our own power and responsibility.

This give me so much hope, because I know these small, quiet, but intensely powerful and moving moments are happening day in day out all across the world”.