Hello Sunshine!                                                                                                               

     Challenges come from all directions, don't they? Whether you're at the bottom looking up, seeing the mountains in front of you, or looking down in a state of fog, wondering how will we ever move through them? It can be challenging to see the horizon sometimes. The past couple of years has taken us through more than turbulence. So many are struggling to breathe and move forward.

     My time at Northern Arizona University brought a clearer vision of my passion for building up trauma-informed care (TIC) and mental health awareness in the state of Arizona. I believe peer-to-peer, non-profits and charitable organizations must understand the essential need to be educated in the most current TIC scientifically evidence-based interventions when working with post-traumatic stress disorders. I am a complex PTSD survivor. I believe I know what trauma does to the mind and the body, and the pain gets worse and more debilitating as we age. I struggled with my mental health after battling decades from the terrors of my past.

     Living until the age of thirteen, mostly in isolation in my home full of children and beatings like a "ragdoll" many seasons daily, was just a taste of what I felt when I left that quiet space. We don't have to have complex PTSD, PTSD, secondary PTSD, or vicarious trauma to feel the lingering effects of psychological stress or potentially traumatic experiences. However, the consequences of repetitive stressful events can move from a psychological to a physiological state with no warning? The neurological and biological destruction spreads like wildfire, and from a perspective, it "feels" impossible to move through many times.

     The dangers are when those moments, memories, and spaces in time where events blend and leave one speechless before we know it, we lose ourselves in that process.  In 2007 I was diagnosed with that catch-all word "fibromyalgia," and believe me when I say I would have given birth every morning to live without the pain all day if that even comes remotely close to what it "feels" like inside. I had no understanding of making what was going on in my head "go away," and trust me, "breathing" is like asking someone who walked in the desert for days if they are thirsty and dangling a sparkling glass of water in front them. It was by far a walk in the park. To get through it was more like a metal triathlon. Of course, that's where the source of pain resided.

     On April 2, 2013, my body and mind finally crashed from four decades of fight or flight to "BAM' simply frozen and left my entire body screaming, "please save me."  After being diagnosed with multiple physical illnesses, TIA" S, and finally conversion disorder, I almost lost hope in myself. I never knew if I would ever find my way back to the "real world again. Professionals would have faith in me, but then my "brain" would do that again and lose to the realities of hopelessness. In March 2018, my oldest son suffered a traumatic brain injury and what doctors called a miracle, and it took me until now to share it wasn't just a miracle in his brain but my own.

     The Northern Arizona University Applied Human Behavior Bachelors program and training I previously received at Glendale Community College under Dr. Thomas E. Rojo Aubrey helped put a language to just what walking through post-trauma "feels" like. My prayers, passion, and purpose are to reach out to those who are still struggling to understand these conditions. I hope you join me as I continue my recovery and journey in bringing awareness of what psychological trauma does to our minds, bodies, and spirits.

     For now, enjoy the sunshine and if your sky is cloudy just remember don’t lose hope for tomorrow. I spent almost half a century walking in and out of those deserts just to keep moving forward “progress not perfection.”

Sunshine is just around the corner my friend,

Rebecca White BS Applied Human Behavior, CTSS