There’s a trail near my house here in Madison. When it rains a lot, the trail tends to flood.
When our kids were younger, it flooded one warm day in summer. My husband and I decided it might be fun to take the kids to the flooded trail. We called it an “adventure”.
As we started out on our adventure, it didn’t take us long to get to a flooded portion of the trail. The kids, all wearing crocs or Chacos, started walking through the gigantic puddle.
Two steps into the puddle, our youngest saw something and started screaming. The kind of scream that can cut to your soul. The kind of scream where my child was shaking, head to toe.
I was sure she saw a snake. Or something equally “scary”.
Nope.
It was the tiniest of tiny crawfish. (To be fair, at this time in her life, the child was also petrified of butterflies. I’d almost guarantee now she’d pick it up.)
She screamed, and screamed, and shook, and screamed some more. I came over and picked her up, and popped her on my right hip, walked through the puddle to the dry earth, and finally, her screams turned to cries that turned to little hiccups.
I don’t know why that crawfish frightened her so badly, but 7 years later, she still talks about that incident. She can’t vocalize why it was traumatic, but she tells me she remembers being afraid.
Trauma can sometimes look like a gigantic snake in the water. It’s obvious to everyone. The bystanders walk away from the same incident thinking “of course. That would be traumatic for anyone.”
Sometimes, though, trauma looks like the tiniest of tiny crawfish. It isn’t obvious to everyone, but it causes an emotional and physical reaction to you.
Unfortunately, we don’t get to pick and choose what’s traumatic to us. Like beauty, trauma is in the eye of the beholder. It’s personal. It’s specific to you and your experience.
It doesn’t matter if it’s the tinniest crawfish, it’s trauma to you and it’s valid.
At RCD we validate your trauma. We can help you get the resources you need or just sit and listen. We’re here to walk through the puddle with you.
