*Note: This is meant to be an elementary explanation. It came out of a conversation. Sometimes you realize you are speaking but your words are not reaching the listener. Not everyone who survives domestic violence, rape, child abuse, terror, or global conflict connects their inability to move forward in life or deal with their emotions to what has happened to them.

Sometimes, laying stuff out plain and allowing people time to process helps.

Meanwhile, please also feel free to get into this post from Shine My Crown where Raquel Hopkins, a licensed therapist and author, added nuance.

Therapist Raquel Hopkins Challenges Overuse of ‘Trauma’ Label in Viral Post: ‘Every Hurt Doesn’t Require Healing’

A Metaphor for Understanding

Imagine your life as a beautiful house.
Each room holds your memories, your joys, your dreams, your relationships.

Now imagine a sudden storm—a hurricane—crashing through your home.
It doesn’t just break a window. It tears through walls.
Some rooms flood. Some furniture is swept away.
Some parts of the house you don’t even want to look at anymore.

That’s trauma.

It’s not just about what happened.
It’s about the way that event shook your entire foundation,
left you wondering if the place you once felt safe could ever be safe again.

Even after the storm passes, the damage remains.

People might walk by your house and say,
“Looks fine from the outside.”
But they don’t see the broken wiring. The mold in the walls. The doors that don’t close.
You feel it. Every day.

Trauma is when something really bad or scary happens to you, and it leaves a mark—not just on your body, but deep inside you.

Sometimes, people get through the hard moment…but they still carry it. 

They carry it in their:

• thoughts

• sleep

• feelings

• trust

• body

• voice

• choices

They may seem okay to others. But inside, they’re hurting, confused, terrified, or on edge.

Trauma is NOT:

• Being “weak”

• Being “too sensitive”

• Something you “should have gotten over”

• A sign that something is wrong with you

🩹 Trauma is:

• What happens when something overwhelms you

• What happens when your heart, mind, or body says:
  “This is too much.”

• A normal response to something not normal

💡 You can have trauma from:

• Abuse

• Losing someone you love

• Being in danger

• Being ignored when you needed help

• Living in fear for a long time

• Witnessing something horrifying

• Being told that your pain doesn’t matter when you try to express it

🧡 You are not alone.

If you’ve been through something hard, and you still feel it—
you are not “crazy.”
You are not broken.
You are human.

And healing is possible.

We believe you.
We see you.

🛠️ And Healing?

Healing is not pretending the storm never happened.
It’s not wallpapering over the broken places.

Healing is rebuilding the house, brick by brick.
Sometimes it means reinforcing old beams.
Sometimes it means tearing down entire rooms and starting fresh.
Sometimes it means learning how to open the windows again, even if just a little.

Trauma doesn’t make you weak.
It means you’ve lived through something that should’ve never happened.
And healing?
That makes you a master builder of your own life.

✊🏾 Quotes on Trauma 

1. “The function of freedom is to free someone else.”
   — Toni Morrison
   🖤 (Because we carry trauma not just for ourselves, but generations—and healing frees us all.)

2. “If you are silent about your pain, they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”
   — Zora Neale Hurston

3. “I came to understand that pain is information.”
   — bell hooks, All About Love
   🧠 (Trauma is not just a wound—it’s a message. Something happened. You matter.)

4. “I am deliberate and afraid of nothing.”
   — Audre Lorde
   🔥 (Even when trauma tries to make us afraid of ourselves, our stories, our voices.)

5. “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.”
   — Audre Lorde

6. “To acknowledge our ancestors means we are aware that we did not make ourselves.”
   — Alice Walker
   🌿 (Our trauma is real. So is our legacy of survival, wisdom, and love.)

7. “We can learn to mother ourselves.”
   — Octavia Butler
   🩹 (Especially when trauma left us with no one to comfort us as children.)

8. “The wound is the place where the light enters you.”
   — Rumi (often quoted by Black writers like Iyanla Vanzant and bell hooks)
   ✨ (A reminder that healing begins when we stop hiding what hurt us.)

9. “Trauma needs a witness. Not a judge.”
   — Tonya GJ Prince
   🖤 (Your voice belongs. Your pain is not an interruption—it’s a story that deserves care.)