In this blog, our Trauma Ambassador Georgina reflects on her journey with trauma over the years.
“Today is the 17th August, and I’m writing this thinking about all the versions of me that have existed on this date throughout my lifetime. From those childhood summers when it was simply another day in the school holidays, to the young woman sitting with anticipatory grief, sensing something she couldn’t yet explain. There were so many years when the 17th August passed without me ever imagining it would become one of the most significant dates of my life, and now there will never be another 17th August that isn’t viewed through the lens of everything that followed.
As I’ve been reflecting this year, I’ve realised that when I think about this date, I don’t just think about one version of myself. I think about four women, each waking up on the morning of the 17th August believing something completely different about who they were and what their future held.
The first was the woman who unknowingly changed everything. She walked into the woods because she genuinely believed there was no other way. She wasn’t looking for attention, she wasn’t trying to make a point and she certainly wasn’t weak. She was exhausted. Completely and utterly exhausted. She had spent years trying to exist in a world that had never made sense to her, blaming herself because life seemed so much harder than it did for everyone else. She couldn’t imagine another August because, at that moment, she couldn’t imagine another day.
A year later came the second woman. She had survived, but she didn’t know how to live. Survival hadn’t brought relief; if anything, it brought even more questions. She desperately wanted to understand what was wrong with her. She went to appointments, completed worksheets, learnt coping strategies, talked through trauma, tracked hormones and questioned every part of herself, yet every answer seemed to lead to another question. Looking back now, I don’t think she was really searching for a diagnosis. I think she was searching for herself.
Then came the third woman, the woman who finally understood. Three words changed everything: autistic, ADHD and PMDD. They didn’t change who she was, but they completely changed the way she saw herself. For the first time in her life she stopped viewing herself through the lens of failure. Instead, she finally had the language to explain experiences she’d spent decades trying to describe. She wasn’t suddenly fixed, and she wasn’t suddenly happy, but she finally understood why life had always felt so loud, so confusing and so exhausting.
At the time, I genuinely believed that understanding was the end of the story. I thought that once I had the answers, everything else would fall into place. Looking back now, I realise I was wrong.
Because now there’s a fourth woman. Me. But I am also them.
I would love to say that the woman writing this letter only knows those other three because she remembers their struggles and their pain, but that wouldn’t be true. The truth is, the struggles and the pain still show up. There are still days when food doesn’t feel safe, when my body feels like it’s shutting down, when the world is too loud and my thoughts become tangled. The difference isn’t that those days have disappeared; it’s that I no longer see them as evidence against me. I no longer believe they prove I’m failing, broken or simply not trying hard enough. I understand them now. More importantly, I’ve learnt to respond to them with curiosity instead of criticism, and with compassion instead of shame.
It would also be wrong to say that I only look back at these other versions of me with sadness, shame or concern. I don’t. I see them for the women they were and for everything they gave me. The first gave me the determination to survive a day she never thought she’d live through. The second gave me the grit to keep searching for answers when every answer seemed to lead to another question. The third gave me a dictionary — the words I’d been searching for all my life. A language that transformed decades of confusion into understanding. She gave me permission to stop translating myself into everyone else’s language and finally begin speaking my own.
So when the dark clouds cast their shadow and life begins to feel like a tower of haphazardly stacked blocks threatening to tumble at any moment, I thank the women who came before me. Not because they found all the answers, but because they taught me where the foundations are. For years I thought the answer was to keep adding another block. If I worked harder, tried harder, masked better, rested later, coped longer, eventually the tower would stop wobbling. It never did. Now I know that when the tower starts to wobble, I don’t need another block; I need the foundations. I need food, rest, safety, connection, compassion and curiosity. I need the courage to ask not “What’s wrong with me?” but “What happened?” and “What do I need right now?”
Those foundations don’t stop the storms from coming. The dark clouds still gather, my nervous system still becomes overwhelmed and there are still days when exhaustion settles into every part of me. But now I know that a tower doesn’t stay standing because it’s built the highest. It stays standing because its foundations are strong. The women who came before me spent years laying those foundations, often without even realising they were doing it, and every time life shakes me, I realise they left me exactly what I need to find my way home again.
Perhaps that’s what coming home has always meant. Not finding a different life, or a different brain, or becoming a different person. It was never about arriving somewhere new. It was about finally recognising that the person I had spent forty-two years trying to escape was the very person who had carried me here.”
Georgina, Trauma Ambassador