It had been three months since I pushed a seven pound baby out of my vagina when I first heard of the book, When Survivors Give Birth (WSGB). I was no longer in pain but I was tired and confused. With one stroke, I had become someone different. Someone who cried more. Someone whose body looked and felt like it was that of an alien. I was also someone who wanted to throw that baby across the room, if it meant that she would stop sucking at my breast.
After I read WSGB, I found an email address for co-author Penny Simkin. I reached out. I told Penny of the job I had left which included lay counseling for domestic violence survivors, running a 24 hour crisis line and abuse education. I had spent a career working with women on using their voice and building healthy relationships. I was not who she normally heard from. I asked Penny if she ever did, "train the trainers" for the book. (Teaching people the content of the book and allowing them to use it.) She said that she would offer them in the future.
In 2013, I received an email invitation to attend a WSGB Train the Trainer. I was the only non-birth worker in the room. I didn't disclose at the training that I was a survivor myself. The book is about the lingering effects of child sexual abuse on survivor. I was not raped as a child. So WSGB isn't about me. Except it was. The challenges breastfeeding, lack of trust, anxiety about being able to protect my baby. This was all true of me. I not only saw myself in the book but recalled what many other women had told me over the years. Women who admitted a violent childhood or an abusive partner but did not identify as child sexual abuse survivors.
Today, more than six years later, I facilitate my own WSGB sessions. I am confident that sexual abuse suffered as an adult can be no less challenging than that of a child survivor. Countless survivors since 2013 have told me too many stories that are like the ones in the book. Their stories and experiences do too. My experience matters too. As a result, my version of the training is inclusive to adult survivors as well.
My WSGB trainings are very different than the one I participated.
Have you ever been stuck in a massive conference hall as the presenter read from their slides, far off but towering above everyone else? Yeah, me too. What could be worse? How about if those slides included graphic quotes from incest survivors? And the room was silent, except for the presenter, and totally dark? That's a lot worse. It's especially terrible if you are a sexual abuse survivor. You feel frozen but also stifled because you can't get away from the emotional content.
My trainings, even before Covid, are nothing like that.
As one recent participant said, "from the very beginning of the workshop, Elizabeth modeled what it's like to tend to people in a trauma-sensitive, consent-based way. As a survivor of trauma myself, the workshop felt personally validating and incredibly safe,"
Always in a small, comfortable room, my trainings start with co-creating group norms. Participants know the content ahead of time because it was on the website that they used to register. But they are reminded of it at the training. But even before they arrive in a cozy room, they are directed to an online form to help inform the course content. They have an opportunity, also, to share anything that they'd like about themselves. From my decades of training, I know there can be confidence with difficult content when people are prepared in advance.
photo credit Rohit Rho via Unsplash
In 2008, I learned the word "intersectional", when I was reading scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw's work. It helped me understand my own experiences, including my own trauma history. But more importantly, it helped me appreciate the complexity in others' identities. I have carried intersectionality into the work that I do, including WSGB trainings. We need look no further than the well-established disparity in care that BIWOC receive, to know that white practitioners and educators should not consider sexual trauma without regard to how factors like systemic racism impact not only rates of abuse but also the medical care that survivors receive.
Finally, my trainings aren't for providers looking to check a box. You cannot sit there. You are challenged to act and think differently than you were trained. That's a high bar for many of you to consider. Because there is comfort in the routine of the old way, your original way.
But if you want to reach patients in a deeper way...
If it angers you that Black women are not only more likely to be sexual trauma survivors but more likely to die in pregnancy and childbirth...
If you care whether your clients come back to you, keep appointments, trust you enough to tell you what's really going on..
If any of this feels relevant to your work, I hope you'll join me for a future session of When Survivors Give Birth. When we can meet, learn and build community in person. The 2020 sessions are canceled.