Adult Trauma

Zazoo, almost 14, is Vietnamese by birth but feels entirely French. She lives with her adoptive grandfather, who brought her form Vietnam to his village in France when she was just two years old. Life with Grand-Pierre has always been filled with poetry and shared adventure, following the predictable rhythms of the season. Then one misty October morning, a boy on a bicycle rides into Ago's small French village and asks a question from which many stories begin to unfold.

Trauma is an inevitable aspect of life. You or anyone you care about has almost certainly been through trauma, whether it was "big-T" trauma like mental, physical, or sexual assault, or "little-t" trauma like divorce, loss of employment, terrible childhood events, or any scenario where you seemed worthless, frightened, or helpless. But we can recover. It doesn't have to be a lifelong process. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a form of psychotherapy that has been shown to help individuals recover from trauma and enhance their quality of life.

Let’s say that you are going through one of your daily life routines when out of nowhere you start getting a sudden feeling of panic. You start losing your breath. Strangers start getting close to you and show signs of worry. Your heart starts racing and you can’t think of what to do next. Then in a matter of moments you feel normal again. But you can’t just ignore that this just happened. You lay awake at night, terrified that this will happen again; seeing how it’s not the first time. You don’t know what exactly has happened or why it happened.

Life as a teen can feel like one big pressure cooker — school, friendships, family, social media — it’s a lot. When stress or anxiety hits, it’s easy to feel stuck. Maybe you’ve tried deep breathing, journaling, or therapy — but nothing seems to truly help.

If you're like many adults today, you've experienced some kind of loss of a loved one. Whether it was a parent, spouse, sibling, friend, or child, losing someone close hurts.

Trauma effects every part of a person, including the relationships they have with children. When anyone close to a child, especially a parent, has been affected by trauma it can be toxic, harmful, and overwhelmingly stressful for the child to not understand it. Part of healing from any kind of trauma is understanding it. This audiobook aids young children who need to heal from the effects of trauma of those close to them. It teaches young children that even though there can be volatility of adults after trauma they are still loved and cared for by the adult.

Finding your place in a family tree that has only one branch, the other shorn by the Holocaust, is a tricky business. Gail Weiss Gaspar grew up believing that her worth was tied to busyness and productivity, with achievement and education prized above all other accomplishments.