Sunday Blog 189 – 15th June 2025
As I continue with the edits on my memoir, I want to share extracts with you, here and there. Especially when the editing intersects with my endless podcast listening, and there’s an insight that might be useful to you today.
As I’m talking about my memoir, I’d like to start with a trigger warning. I’m not going to go into details, but I am going to talk about trauma and recovery. If that’s not right for you today, please look after yourself and scroll on.
10th May 2002 is a defining date in my life. Before that date, I’d suffered very little of what I would deem trauma. But on the 10th May 2002 that innocence was gone when I survived a home invasion. That’s 23 years ago now, and I’ve been fortunate to have processed this trauma and build a life of not just surviving, but thriving. I know how many privileges have helped create this outcome, starting with a secure childhood with kind parents.
In my memoir edits I’ve been circling around in a chapter tackling trauma and recovery. And what I knew to be true for me in 2002, was that I needed a range of healing modalities, as I worked through the gigantic task of processing this event. Not just talk-based therapies, I needed bodywork–acupuncture, massage, yoga, self-defence and on and on.
Most people will have heard of Bessel van der Kolk, and his seminal work The Body Keeps the Score. Recently he was interviewed on Rangan Chatterjee’s podcast, and I loved what he said about yoga. He undertook three research studies using yoga for people recovering from trauma, and the results were very positive. He said;
“Then people say, yoga is the answer. No, yoga was a paradigm that helped us to understand how engaging with your body in a particular way is helpful, but it’s not the final word on the story”
Dr Bessel van der Kolk
Bessel longs to do a study on tango and trauma recovery, for example. He thinks the results would likely be just as positive.
The section of my memoir detailing the first year after the assault reads
“Adamant that my approach to my recovery would be multi-pronged, I aimed to use a diverse range of body therapies alongside counselling. I wasn’t going to leave trauma trapped in my cells. But when I looked around, I couldn’t see this accessible mix of body and mind therapies. I would have to work this out for myself.”
And I did. We all need to work it out for ourselves. Yoga won’t be right for everyone. Tangoing won’t be either. But the key is that our bodies hold the key to trauma recovery. There still isn’t a clear pathway for trauma survivors to find the right blend of talk-based and body-based therapies. But that doesn’t have to stop us seeking it for ourselves. Using a yoga app. Scouring the internet for tango lessons or exercise programs that are free or low cost. Trauma recovery requires a body and mind combined approach which can be a hit and miss affair. But it’s so well worth it. We are all worth it.