Blog – PipBrennan

A Week Alone in Paris

Sunday Blog 242 – 19th July 2026

Last Sunday blog, I was checking into my Airbnb at 7am on Tuesday 30th June, thanks to my kind host who took pity on me, a long-haul flight survivor. I didn’t dare test the wheeled backpack-plus-suitcase combination on the metro from Charles de Gaulle airport, opting for a taxi.

Just a few streets shy of our destination, the van in front of us stopped in a small, impassable street and the driver descended and proceeded to load and unload fifty boxes. Finally I was deposited at the approximate location of my accommodation. Then I just had to peer at the map, check I was travelling in the way the arrow wanted me to, wrangle a door code, ascend two flights of stairs twice (because, baggage), and voila, I’d reached my home for a week.

For my next book project, I’m researching the period 1850-1920, with a keen interest in the Paris Siege of 1870 which culminated in the Paris Commune of 1871. A post-Revolution Revolution if you will, to tackle the unfinished business of the French Revolution we all envisage, with the guillotine and Marie Antionette heading to her doom. The Paris Commune of 1871 was a diverse group of soldiers, students, women, artists, looking for the egality, liberty and fraternity, even sorority that hadn’t quite been delivered.

For my precious Parisian week, I toggled between knocking out the work to keep the dollars rolling in, and hitting the streets for my book research. Out into Paris I would go, shedding those dollars more rapidly than they could accrue.

I’d made a haphazard list of places to visit, and at the top of it was the Musee Carnavalet of Paris. I headed there the day after the big flight. A bit like IKEA, the Musee Carnavalet made me walk through all the previous galleries until I could get to my desired historical period.

With that ticked off, next on my list was the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, but did I visit Jim Morrison’s grave? I did not. Instead I found my way to the Mur de Federes, the site of the last stand of the Paris Commune. Here the final rebels were cornered, lined up and shot and buried where the wall now stands. That brought La Semaine Sanglante – the Bloody Week to a close, where French government troops executed between 20,000 and 25,000 (no precise figures are available) of the Communards, without trial. Not before the rebels had seen imminent defeat and murdered a Bishop being held hostage, and torched much of Paris, so there were atrocities on both sides.

But still, it’s a forgotten civil war I had never delved into it prior to this book project. I sat next to the Mur de Federes and re-listened to the podcast episode from A Journey Through Time on the end of the Commune, imagined the last battle raging between the headstones, and the desperate last stand.

After this still and sombre moment, I dined nearby, consuming a very indifferent and expensive salad, not the last one I would encounter in France. And I made my way back to my atelier, my lonely garret for one week.

How glorious it was.

It’s not the getting there, it’s the arriving*

*With apologies to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who never took a long haul flight

Sunday Blog 241 – 12th July 2026

I can hold myself back no longer. Travel spam incoming. Perhaps starting with my getting-there snafus will make this series on my French odyssey a less insufferable. Here goes. I’m rewinding us back to 30th June so I can start from the very beginning.

Snafu 1. Choosing to take my new, untested backpack with wheels

The new backpack required some assembly when I received it, and its mean little screw did not inspire confidence, but with idiotic hubris I jammed it full of all the things.

“It’s a research trip,” I said to myself as I added four books, three Oracle card packs, several notebooks, five different types of journals and on and on. “This backpack fits MUCH more than my usual backpack. And think of those stair-climbing wheels on the backpack! They’ll be ace!”

On the morning of my departure, the fifth time I re-did my suitcase and backpack, I noted that the action of leaning over to undo and re-do zips elevated my core temperature to fever levels. Sweating despite the winter chill, I began to ponder if perhaps I’d bought a little too much with me. It’s like I’ve never travelled before.

Too late, the Uber to to the airport was on its way. As I waited by the postbox, I spotted one of the backpack’s straining zips coming apart. As the Uber turned the corner into my road, I yanked the zip back and forth over the gap and that seemed to work. I threw it in the Uber boot and prayed. But there would be more, much more unzipping to be done.

Snafu 2. My decision to pack ankle weights

I decided that to make sure I could keep up with my new weights regime during my five-week French trip, I should definitely chuck in my ankle weights. I have never used these ankle weights.

There were not one but two separate screening processes 750 metres apart in the same airport for me to undergo, because I don’t know why (but annoying, Qantas). Also, the second lot of baggage handlers need you to take out laptops and tablets. Why? It’s the same damn airport.

Anyhoo, I watched as my backpack was diverted down the aisle of shame and the baggage handlers called me over. They searched in vain for the source of the strange Xray image of an item resembling machine gun cartridges. I had to disgorge every last item to reach the offending ankle weights. This happened both times.

On the plus side the straining zip seemed to be managing all the doing and undoing. I, on the other hand was hotter than ever. Released from the second bag check, I kept the ankle weights in my hand. The nearest bin was close, and the sound they made as they hit the bottom was incredibly gratifying.

Snafu 3. My inability to drink a coffee

Still buoyed by the loud thunk the weights had made and the release of their absence, I presented at the coffee shop. It was 11.30am and I’d done all of the above without coffee. I ordered the largest size I could get and sat on a table which was very wobbly, but I was sure I could manage this. I could not, and half of this newly purchased coffee threw itself across the table and in an impressive arc around me. Luckily no-one was sitting nearby. The staff cleaned it up, gave me another coffee and then removed the offending table as if to reinforce that I was not a monumental klutz.

And then, just like that, my luck changed

When boarding to flight from Singapore to Paris, my initial flight companion was a man seated separately from his family. The three seats in front of them were empty, so the stewardess offered him to swap. He sat down briefly in his new position, then realised that none of the TV screens were working. He opted to return to his original seat. And then my good fortune was there to be snatched.

“I’ll sit there,” I offered. Movies, schmovies. I would be able to lie down for the next monotonous 13 plus hours. AND my Paris airbnb let me check in straight away, even though I touched down at 5.30am.

I have never understood Ralph Waldo Emerson’s take on arriving versus getting there. Give me an arrival any day.

Post-traumatic Growth is a Thing – Part Three

Taming the Triggers

Sunday Blog 240 – 5th July 2026

Today I wanted to tackle the concept of triggers, and offer a message of hope.

Back in 2002, in the early days after the assault, on Mother’s Day I took my daughter Zoë to a sweet child-friendly cafe with a playground, for a meet-up with a group of mothers. The first to arrive by a long way, I ordered a large slab of cake, a pot of tea and a rubbish ice-cream for Zoë who was very satisfied with her treat. I breathed for a moment, leaning into the comfort of the beautiful cafe as I waited for the others to arrive.

Zoë needed a toilet stop after a while, and as I’d never been to the cafe before, I wasn’t familiar with the bathroom’s idiosyncrasies. It was an old-style ablution block a short walk from the tables and playground. As I was exiting with Zoë on my hip, I turned off the light switch and plunged us into darkness. I fumbled with the door handle, turning left, right. It wouldn’t yield. Unease welled up, rising to panic.

Then, I remembered; this was exactly the situation I’d been in when trying to flee during the attack. My body in its wisdom was telling me to beware as the last time I’d been in this position it had been Bad.

When my mind made this connection, the anxiety evaporated. The message that all was safe was sent back down from my rational brain to my body. As if I was re-encoding the doorknob with a safety tag, turning off the fear trigger.

It was pure dumb luck on my part that so soon after the event I was able to make the connection in my head and re-file the scenario in the toilet as safe. Perhaps this healing pas-de-deus between my body and mind was fuelled by my natural optimism, the bedrock of my nurtured childhood, and my fortunate adulthood.

And yet, there was another really key element for me in this; information. My GP had given me the gift of the clue; post-traumatic stress. It was my key to the door out of its dungeon.

I was lucky. So often, people who have suffered trauma are not routinely informed of the likelihood of suffering from PTSD. I’ve never forgotten being on a autumn writing retreat in Greece back in 2022. I was reading Corey White’s moving memoir The Prettiest Horse in the Glue Factory where everything that could have gone wrong in his childhood, did. He’d cycled through child protection, mental health services, drug and alcohol rehabs, prison, you name it. Over all those years and medley of settings no-one had ever mentioned that with what he’d survived, he would have post-traumatic stress disorder.

As I inhaled his book in the hazy Greek heat I was incandescent with fury on his behalf that nobody had ever mentioned PTSD to him. When he finally learned about PTSD, it was a key turning point in his memoir. It began to unlock the mystery of why he behaved the way he did.

I’m not trying to suggest recovery from PTSD, that taming our triggers is an easy process. My moment in the loo was just the beginning of a long road after a single incident trauma. But the healing often can’t even begin if we’re not educated about trauma.

If this speaks to you today, and you want to find more, have a look here. It’s my new go-to resource hub for post-traumatic growth research and information.

And for now, that’s a wrap on this series. Blessings to you.

On the eve of a journey…

Sunday Blog 239 – 28th June 2026

I’ve more to add to my post-traumatic growth series of blogs – but today just wasn’t the day. I needed to take a breath, bask in the nervous excitement of the-day-before-travel. Tomorrow I fly out to Paris for five weeks of research, writing, working, catching up with friends and getting started on the next book project. Which is set, in, well, France.

What an immense privilege it is to be able to travel. How lucky, lucky, lucky I feel to be able to return to a city I first visited in 1979, where I looked as if I was thoroughly loathing every minute. (Top left image). Being 14 is hard, am I right?

Back as a 27-year-old in Versailles in 1992, I’m reading Jane Austen, yet again, and caught in an action shot. (Top right image).

There was a thirty year gap before I returned to France in 2022, (bottom left image) where for an eye-watering sum my sister and I travelled a short distance between wherever we were when we saw the woman and her horse and buggy, and the Eiffel Tower. My sister had only just tolerated the heinous price tag for the short ride, but once we were turfed out at the Eiffel Tower, still shrieking with laughter about who knows what, she realised that was a per head cost. But what can one do, but pay the extortionate piper and move on? And get a selfie with the Tower, of course.

2025 I was back, but not to Paris, instead straight to Toulouse and the unsuccessful French writing retreat (which you can read about here, should you want to). The one I fled from, booked a car and drove to Biarritz, (bottom right image).

When we travel, we take our past selves with us, like a Russian doll of trip experiences expanding ever outwards. At 14, I was completely dependant. At 27, I was driven around by my boyfriend of the time. In 2022, I still hadn’t tackled driving on the right hand side of the road. But by 2025, I was alight with the freedom that hiring a car brings to a holiday.

So here’s to the night before leaving, to travel, to expansion, to La Belle France and of course, writing.

Post-traumatic Growth is a Thing – Part Two

Sunday Blog 238 – 21st June 2026

Quote on rainbow background;
“The relevant question to ask yourself isn’t,
How will I navigate this change?
But rather,
How will I, with potentially new capabilities, values, and perspectives, navigate this change?

Maya Shankar,
The Other Side of Change

In the middle of the night, 10th May 2002, I woke up, lay in my bed for a moment or two. Then I heard the soft padding of feet. Perhaps that sound had woken me up. A subtle sound that seemed to come from the kitchen. Could that be my three-year-old daughter’s little feet as she padded about the house? But what was she doing up? Getting a midnight snack? No.

Then a spoon (or was it a knife?) clattered to the floor. A cat, perhaps knocking cutlery to the ground? But, I didn’t have a cat. I got out of bed with only mild curiosity; no dread, no fear. Bad things don’t happen to me.

I walked down the short, dark hallway and was nearly as far as the kitchen when I met the dark outline of a tall, wiry frame. A man with a curly head of hair, his face obscured.

It wasn’t my daughter. It wasn’t a cat.

There was the slim thread of hope that it might be my partner Paul (who at the time didn’t live with me), but the shape was all wrong.

He was a man I didn’t know.

And there, at that moment, the myths I didn’t know I treasured; that bad things don’t happen to good people, that life is ordered, reasonable and fair, collapsed in on themselves.

When I sat in the counsellor’s clinic around three weeks after the assault, I found myself saying to her, “I think losing my faith in humanity is worse than the assault.”

Capital “T” trauma is a very varied thing. One person’s trauma can be another person’s minor setback. It’s not helpful for us to get tangled up in the “trauma olympics” of whose suffering is worse. Post-traumatic growth researcher and advocate Richard Tedeschi says in this paper that “the challenge to [a] core belief system … can be a new way to define trauma, rather than making reference to certain types of events.”

For me, prior to 10th May 2002, before this home invasion catastrophe was visited upon my head, my life had been ordered, reasonable and calm on the whole. I wrestled with the loss of my belief that life is fair. I wasted time wondering what I may have done in a previous life to deserve this.

Maya Shankar, author of The Other Side of Change has this to say in the PDF accompanying her audiobook; “you may be able to endure a negative change far better than you think at the outset, and that’s because you’re underestimating your own ability to evolve as a result of that change. The relevant question to ask yourself isn’t, How will I navigate this change? But rather, How will I, with potentially new capabilities, values, and perspectives, navigate this change?

Or as Tedeschi says in this 2025 article, “When that [belief system] infrastructure is shattered through trauma, it needs to be rebuilt, and it is best rebuilt to accommodate future disasters.”

What I pieced together over the months and years after 10th May 2002, is that shit happens. To anyone. And that when that shit happens, I will probably be OK, over time. And that to me is Post-traumatic Growth.

Post-traumatic growth is a Thing – Part One

Sunday Blog 237 – 14 June 2026

I’d been at an art workshop in London, in the very early days after my arrival, in 1990. I was trying on new identities on the other side of the world from my birth family.

Anyway, at the end of the course, a few of us decided to exchange phone numbers to stay in touch in that after-glow of positive group juju. I approached one woman I’d had enjoyable exchanges with, and offered up the piece of paper for her to write her number on. She backed off, her eyes alight with the glint of a cornered animal.

“I don’t give out my number.”

“Of course,” I said with as breezy an air as I could manage, covering up my momentary embarrassment and puzzlement and withdrawing. You might have predicted that the bonhomie of this group died its natural death once the course had finished; we never stayed in touch. But her reaction planted a seed of inquiry in me.

As the luck of my life would have it, another twelve years would pass before I’d be able to interpret her reaction. In May 2002, I was flailing about in a soup of disordered responses after surviving a home invasion. This old memory resurfaced and I understood at once. She had endured some kind of trauma that had robbed her of the luxury of trust.

In May 2002 I still didn’t have words for either her reaction twelve years earlier, or my emotional state at the time. A glitch in the system meant I hadn’t had any follow-up counselling booked in after making my police statement and undergoing a full forensic examination. And feeling that I couldn’t quite battle on alone, I’d made an appointment with my favourite female GP who’d known me over years. I poured out my story of the home invasion, and her eyes widened before she righted herself.

You’ll have post-traumatic stress,” she said.

I caught her words like a ball snatched from the air. Now I had something to work at with my logical mind. A raft to ride the torrents. Her clue was a gift that put the power back into my hands and I began researching and reading on the topic. I read and read. I learned that post-traumatic stress or PTS can continue to affect our behaviour and well-being for months, years or even a lifetime. By which time it has morphed to post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD.

The acronym PTS soon rolled off my tongue, because its mastery promised to tie down and tame its complex challenges. By whatever name, PTS seemed a compulsory fairground ride I was locked into after the home invasion. I pictured myself clicking the safety bar in place; my privilege of a nurtured childhood, my loving family and resilience, and my reflection and research skills, and prepared to endure.

So I conceded I had PTS for now—but I was pernickety and precise, and if anyone ever suggested I had PTSD, I corrected them.

However, despite the term post-traumatic growth having been coined in 1996 and in the established literature by 2002, nobody ever mentioned the possibility of post-traumatic growth or PTG to me. Post-traumatic stress disorder, however, was mentioned all the time.

To be clear, post-traumatic growth isn’t merely resilience, “bouncing back” to who you were before the trauma. It’s expanding who you are. Or as it notes on the post-traumatic day growth website, “It is a recognition of the profound insights that can emerge from our darkest moments.” Like me, suddenly reviewing that incident from long ago. With my enlarged understanding of the world I could finally recognise why someone might not feel safe to share their contact details with me. I think that makes me a more well-rounded, and hopefully kinder person.

When I decided to start my first post-traumatic growth blog, I didn’t even realise that 13th June is World Post-Traumatic Growth day. I thought perhaps you had never heard of post-traumatic growth. That perhaps you needed to hear of this concept. If so, here it is. Happy Post-Traumatic Growth Day.

Seven Year Cycles

Or should I call this muted, belated birthdays?

Sunday Blog 236 – 7 June 2026

Maybe it’s a man thing, indifference about birthdays. My father was always slightly bemused by the fuss we created on his big day, but he went along with it cheerfully enough. Darling husband (who may or may not be somewhat like my father) doesn’t want parties or attention on his birthday, not even the big milestone ones.

Mum however was committed to birthdays, and that drove our family culture of a gathering with cake, candles, singing happy birthday and, of course, presents. When a gathering couldn’t be achieved, the happy birthday song was a must. Wherever I was in the world, Mum would warble out happy birthday, either as a live performance or as a recorded phone message.

This birthday, I travelled to Brisbane for work, so I wasn’t home to bask in any celebrations that might have been going on. Darling husband was in Japan, cycling. The whole day went by with only a tide of Facebook posts and ripple of voice messages (including one rendition of happy birthday). No presents, no cake, no candles. Mum is no longer here to sing to me. But I mean, I’m 61, so I should be able to handle all that.

Still, it’s got me reflecting on seven year cycles of my life. I even created a little photo grid.

Seven. The year I confessed to my Catholic parents that the nun who was teaching me was hitting me. It all came to a head when I wet my pants and had to be taken home to be changed. Mum must have known somehow, even before I told. She didn’t let Sr Imelda in the front door. That night, the story tumbled out of me, Dad went to the school the very next day, stood over the diminutive Sr Imelda in the bitumenised playground, warned her off ever hitting me again. She never did. I look pretty happy posing on the beetle, anyway.

Fourteen. The year I went to Europe with my parents and my sister Gay; we were the two youngest and it was cheaper to take us than enrol us in boarding school. In the image I’m posing in my birthday ugg boots and padded vest. I bloody loved that padded vest. Europe is still several months away. Travelling to Europe from 1979 Perth was like orbiting the moon and looking down on the earth, everything now in its right proportions. The constricted sameness of my Perth life was blasted clean away. I vowed to return to Europe.

Twenty-one. The year I talked my parents into hosting my birthday party at theirs. I had significantly under-reported the likely turnout. See in the pic posing next to the cake. My hair was short, I’d given up cigarettes, was nearly finished my degree and newly single. Europe was on my list; but first, a career.

Twenty-eight. I’d been living in London for three years by then; my museum career in Perth was continuing after a fashion, in London. Italy was on my doorstep as was all continental Europe, but I could rarely afford to go. I was single again, and finally understood the importance of women owning their own property. I was on the cusp of buying my own place.

Thirty-five. I was back in Perth, living close to my parents for support but looking to make my own way again. I’d finished with museums, then taken up teaching in Greece, a couple of solitary, tough years ending in an unexpected pregnancy. I’d had my daughter back in Perth but returned to the grand old city of Thessaloniki to see if I could stitch together our Greek Australian family. I couldn’t. I was in the process of selling the London place and buying a home for me and my daughter, looking out for a way to settle down as a solo mama.

Forty-two. I’d navigated buying the new home aged thirty-six, met the love of my life, then survived a home invasion six months after buying my supposedly forever solo mama home. The love of my life vacillated, wouldn’t commit, and by forty-two I’d made the break for a new start, back to living near my parents. And then guess what? The love of my life decided to stop distancing, and we agreed to be married. I was well into my new non-profit career by then, museums very distant in the rear vision mirror of my life.

Forty-nine. I came out, finally as an author, with a self-published memoir debriefing the home invasion. I quit my first managerial role in a non-profit, so I’d be freer to write. I decided I’d become an entrepreneur, metamorphose into a life coach. But instead, a new non-profit role careened into the picture, and my business dream boat was torpedoed before it could even launch.

Fifty-six. Seven years of stewarding the non-profit ran into the concrete wall of Covid-19. How could I realistically remain at the helm of a patient advocacy non-profit, and not give a shit about Covid? I couldn’t. Nor could I retire. I’ve bumbled and stumbled into a rhythm of working a little bit, writing much more. Transitioning to retirement, boho-style.

Sixty-three in 2028. How we change, life streaming away, year on year. Let’s imagine my 63. Will I still be working? I think so. Will I still be writing? 100%

According to Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Women Who Run With the Wolves, this is the stage of re-evaluating life, prioritising our life’s work still to be done. And there’s more, so much more. Estes has mapped out seven year cycles up to 105 and beyond, included in the pic below.

And with that, I’m calling it a wrap on the birthday.

Turns Out

I should’ve been WOOPing all these goal-setting years…

Sunday Blog 235 – 24th May 2026

For those of you who know me, goal setting is my jam. There’s nothing I love more than cracking the spine of a planner in January and spending a whole afternoon paddling around in all my wishes and dreams and aspirations. Setting a fresh crop for the year, and graphically recording it in a vision board.

From 2014 until 2021, I used Desire Map journals (see pic above) based on the premise of excavating your Core Desired Feelings – the way you want to feel, and making your goals through this emotion lens. It’s more female, less male. Goals with soul.

But their creator eventually couldn’t be arsed making The Desire Map planners anymore, so in 2022 I had to pivot to an off-the shelf option, a mi-GOALS planner. It wasn’t quite the same because I dropped the habit of reflecting on my Core Desired Feelings. But it was still very much focused on goals. I was prompted to roll around in my wish-list items at the beginning of the year, each month, each quarter and for that luscious end of year annual wallow.

Then in 2026 I chose a planner that caught my eye on Facebook. (Once a pleasant place to catch up with friends near and far, Facebook has now become my dealer for impulse buys. But that’s another entire blog.)

This new Curation journal confronted me by asking me to reflect on my fears in relation to my goals. Fears? Ewww. Move on, Debbie Downer, I thought, as I cut and pasted another image for my 2026 vision board.

And then, last week, in my medley of podcast listening I randomly clicked on an episode on the upbeat show Live Better Feel More (Rangan Chatterjee). The interviewee Nir Eyal cited research which indicated that people who do vision boards get all relaxed because they think they’ve achieved their goal already. They’ve imagined the sights, sounds, smells, and physical sensations of achieving their dreams. And they relax. Also, when things don’t pan out, they blame themselves for not imagining hard enough.

I almost ran my car off the road during the episode. Once home, I couldn’t rest. Like a leaping lemur I bounced from the podcast to Eyal’s book Beyond Belief which I listened to in its entirety until found Gabrielle Oettingen’s WOOP website.

Let me save you all the hours this took. Oettingen is a New York psychologist, researcher and academic, and she discovered the importance of not just visualising your dreams, but thinking about the obstacles you will inevitably encounter, and making a plan to overcome these.

Mind. Blown.

It’s a relatively simple process. There’s even an app! Think of a wish, visualise it with all senses (yeah, yeah, I’ve been doing that like, FOREVER), but then I have to put a peg on my nose, think of all the obstacles and then emerge the other side of this reality check with a plan.

Here’s an example. I can express a wish to spend less than I earn over the next month. (Wish) I can draw up a nice vision board image with wads of cash in my savings account, symbolising how I will feel. (Outcome) BUT I also need to do the next two steps I’ve been missing all these years.

“When I see the next shiny thing on Facebook,’’ (Obstacle) ‘‘I’m going to throw my phone across the room and go for a walk around the block and have a long, hard talk to myself about consumerist culture.’’ (Plan).

So I’m going to get right onto re-doing all my vision board wishes with the WOOP method. Right after I impulsively order Gabrielle Oettingen’s book Re-thinking Positive Thinking…

Remembering/forgetting

Sunday Blog 234 – 17 May 2026

I’m in Margaret River for the Readers and Writers Festival. Previous visits to this town have washed me through with melancholy. Five years ago in 2021 when I attended the same event, I was gripped with a sharp grief at the absence of my parent’s generation. I could almost see Dad and his brother John emerging from the pub after a drink together. They were brothers but also friends across their long lives even though they were separated by a three hour drive. Margaret River was where our two families usually would catch up and reignite bonds.

In 2026, this feeling is gentler. Margaret River has become populated with new memories and new people, like my little great niece, born after Dad died.

Am I getting the hang of this life thing, as I race towards my 61st birthday? Now I am able to observe my great highs and lows with a small touch of perspective. For example, this week’s writerly rejection is already receding into “what was that fuss all about then?’’ One of the authors whose talk I attended this morning advised us to “embrace the no’s, because the yeses are out there.’’

In case you needed to hear this today, “till the very end, there is always another chance.’’

Happy Sunday.

10 May

Sunday Blog 233 – 10th May 2026

There is a trigger warning for this post which contains the details and reflections of sexual assault. Please take care when reading or scroll on by if this is not for you.

“One day this date won’t mean anything. You won’t even remember it.” So said a friend of mine about that terrible date; 10th May 2002. At the time I was dubious, and twenty four years later, I know for sure this is not true.

Because on 10 May 2002, in the very early hours of the morning, a man broke into my beautiful, just-bought home and sexually assaulted me. I was 36 years old. My daughter, who was there at the time, was just three years old.

This horrific event was a slash in the canvas of my life; unlike anything I had ever endured. Up until then, my childhood and adventurous, fulfilling adult life had been fortunate.

So, I was closer to 40 than 30 before I began to understand trauma from the inside. Before I discovered the many blind spots I didn’t know I had, the words missing from my vocabulary.

In the first 72 hours, the attack replayed over and over in my mind. Although I’d accessed emergency services, I had no immediate follow-up counselling, so I ended up two weeks later in my GP’s office.

“You’ll have post-traumatic stress.”

I snatched at the term like a lifeline. It wasn’t like I had never heard the term, I just didn’t recognise I was experiencing it until a trusted health professional who knew me, named it for me.

This initiated voracious researching, and I learned that post-traumatic stress can get locked up in our bodies and our minds; but that each can initiate healing in the other. That post-traumatic stress can become post-traumatic stress disorder when the toxic, untethered memories flap about, setting off unnecessary alarm bells in situations that are safe.

Just a few days after the GP visit, I met some friends at a cafe I’d never been to before. Me and my daughter arrived early, and after a while, she needed a toilet stop. In the unfamiliar bathroom, after our business was done, I had my daughter on my hip and I turned out the light to leave, plunging us into darkness. I couldn’t find the door handle and a terror overtook my whole body. Because this was exactly what happened during the attack. Me trying to escape, my daughter on my hip, the deadlocked front door barring our exit.

Reason rushed in to reassure my body, that holding my child 0n my hip in darkness was OK. We were at a beautiful cafe. Friends were due to arrive in about an hour. Back at our table in the dappled sun, there was coffee and cake for me, and a sweet treat for my girl. There was no danger. So, being in the dark carrying my daughter was re-encoded as safe; and the panic evaporated. Like pulling a plug out of the socket.

This was spontaneous for me, but it got me wondering. Maybe post-traumatic stress after a shocking event like 1oth May was an inevitable fairground ride I would have to board. But could I use my mind to tame trauma triggers and avoid developing post-traumatic stress disorder?

I set about this task with the determination of a patient determined to walk again after a spinal accident. In the chaotic aftermath of the assault, I used my body to heal my mind and my mind to heal my body. I had every kind of body therapy you can think of, to rid my cells of the trauma. I summonsed all the perspective, resources, tools and mental practices I had gathered in my life.

But still, I had no language to describe difference between a grown adult like me experiencing trauma and a child. Eventually I gathered the term “single incident trauma” to name what I’d survived on 10 May 2002. Later, I learned that people who have survived childhood trauma have complex post traumatic stress.

There was yet one more term I came to learn. Post traumatic growth. I had not only survived 10 May 2002, I had incorporated bigger lessons, met and learned from survivors of trauma of all kinds.

Post-traumatic growth is a thing. It was named in research in the 1990s. I wondered that this was never mentioned to me in the early years and months after 10 May 2002.

Perhaps parading post traumatic growth too early could seem insensitive. But doesn’t it give us humans something to hope for? Because as I learned from people impacted by childhood trauma, we are wired to heal even from the worst of the worst. Sometimes just the slimmest line of hope from a kind adult reaching into the mess of an unsafe childhood can be enough to climb out of the abyss.

Would I even know any of this if it wasn’t for 10th May? I’m not sure. But I always remember this date. Always.

Happy twenty-fourth survivorversary to me.

If you need to reach out for help or to talk to someone, there are plenty of links on here and here and here