An important step of going through the grief portion of trauma can be reaching out in a way that allows one to understand they are not alone in their experiences. With having this dialogue is being open-minded, not minimizing emotions or the experience, validating, and listening. In order to mimic this dialogue results from a google form were as follows:

• The highest percentages of trauma experienced: family or partner abuse, community violence (bullying, assault, shooting), sexual abuse, religious abuse and continued high stress environment.
  • Other common experienced by participants included: serious motor accident, life threatening illnesses, and enduring a natural disaster.
  • Forty-one percent of participants feel that trauma is 100% enevitable, which is correct! But it does not need to have an entirely negative connotation.
• WHAT FEELINGS DID PARTICIPANTS EXPERIENCE AFTER THEIR EXPERIENCES?
  • 24% of them felt some form of anxiety.
  • 28% of them felt anger initially.
  • 35% of them felt somewhat depressed, sad, isolated, numb.
  • 38% felt overly vulnerable, scared, confused.
• DID THEY FEEL SUPPORTED?
  • 47% said yes, 30% said no, 23% had mixed experiences.
• HOW DID THEIR BEHAVIOR CHANGE?
  • Perception of others were morphed.
  • More cautious, but anxious as well.
  • Limited expectations, numbed out.
  • Become more liberated and expressive, partiuclarly after religious trauma. Yet, more anxious in large places like Times Square.
  • Trust issues and racial insecurity.
  • Lessened sense of self, less out spoken.
  • More empathetic to crises around the world, after a bombing scare.

//Trigger Warning: SPECIFIC PERSONAL ACCOUNTS. There is comfort, in the uncomfortable. Unfortunately, situations like these are more common than perceived. It is important to practice empathy before ever pitying. Validate, listen, empathize. //

✰”At 8 years old, my mother severely beat me badly and made me sleep outside for the night, this was not a sole occurrence. Proceeded to take me to a prison in order to scare me”.

✰”At thirty-seven years old my ex-boyfriend cheated on me with six girls and severely emotionally damaged me in general. He did not pay any bills causing me to go into severe debt and struggle to support myself and child.”

✰”My mother used to wear a niqab, which covers your face and hair completely, as well as cultural clothing. She no longer does after Islamophobic encounters. I now fear for my safety even as a non-hijab wearing Muslim.”

✰”Bloodshed of my war torn country has traumatized me. I was about 5. I seen so many Yemeni people being killed and slaughtered by us and Saudi military force. I also was held at gunpoint which really scared me.”

✰”When I was 10/11 my step brother would do innapropriate acts to me that at I didnt understand. When I lost my virginity at 16 it sent me into a psychotic episode that no one understood why or how it happened, the guy continued to abuse my vulnerbility and it led to a worsening episode where I was hospitalized multiple times, when i got into my next serious relationship the same thing and worse happened where he would physically hit me as a ‘joke'”.

✰”Going to CPS to get help from my abusive dad and them coming to the house telling him what I said and leaving me to fend for myself… and being raped by multiple of my brothers friends the day I broke up with my long term abusive boyfriend at 15″.

✰The sudden death of a loved one. I was 20 years old. One morning my mother & I were grocery shopping for my grandmother. She hadn’t answered her phone all morning even when we tried calling but we figured she was asleep. Shortly after leaving the store, we arrived to my grandmothers house to find her laying on the bathroom floor. I was the only one out of anyone to see her laying on the floor dead, which means the image will forever be something I have in my head. I knew I had to be the strong one for my mother since this was a very hard time for us but especially her. I went up to my grandmother, touched her cold face and hard hands, and in that moment I knew she was gone. I called 911 and handled the whole situation myself. After I went to my mother & she said “Is she gone?” and I looked at her and shook my head yes with the absolute worst pain I’ve ever felt in my heart, telling my mother that her mother was gone.

✰I was 20 and this was at my first ever command which is in the Middle East, there was a false alarm for a IED (bomb), but at the time I didn’t know that. Others would be 911 calls for unknown reasons and not knowing what’s happening.

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