Everyone is entitled to own their own trauma. We get to own our own stories. One person's experience is no more or less traumatic than someone else's.

While April is the time of year for anticipation of the joy and beauty that is to come with the approach of summer, it is also a time of year for reflection, meditation, and remembering the difficult journey of reaching this moment in the present.

Healing is not a linear journey. It is a constant back-and-forth, at least for me. There have been many moments in my life like this. In the early years, I thought those moments meant I was regressing—that I had somehow undone the healing I had worked so hard for. But over time, I came to understand something different.

Kenneth, Dawn and Neil are all survivors of sexual assault. Our experiences with the initial trauma and the recovery have all been different. Our journeys have one thing in common, however. Our paths to healing have been winding and unpredictable.

I grew up in a deeply unhealthy and dysfunctional household. From an early age, I remember saying to myself, “When I have kids, I will never…” Even as a child, I knew I wanted something different. I knew I wanted to be a mother.

As a child, fear [of ICE] lived quietly in the background of my life. It was present in ways that were easy to overlook from the outside but impossible to escape from within. It shaped how I paid attention to the world. It shaped how I understood safety.

Women who have endured complex trauma often pour themselves deeply into motherhood. Parenting becomes more than a role—it becomes a purpose, a place of safety, and sometimes a way to rewrite the past.

As a child, fear [of ICE] lived quietly in the background of my life. It was present in ways that were easy to overlook from the outside but impossible to escape from within. It shaped how I paid attention to the world. It shaped how I understood safety.

In light of the current administration’s use of ICE to terrorize communities and increased immigration enforcement, Alejandra Anastas will talk about the mental health toll of constantly looking over your shoulder, worrying if you’re next.