10 May

Sunday Blog 233 - 10 May 2026

There is a trigger warning for this post which contains the details and reflections of sexual assault. Please take care when reading or scroll on by if this is not for you.

“One day this date won't mean anything. You won't even remember it.” So said a friend of mine about that terrible date; 10th May 2002. At the time I was dubious, and twenty four years later, I know for sure this is not true.

Because on 10 May 2002, in the very early hours of the morning, a man broke into my beautiful, just-bought home and sexually assaulted me. I was 36 years old. My daughter, who was there at the time, was just three years old.

This horrific event was a slash in the canvas of my life; unlike anything I had ever endured. Up until then, my childhood and adventurous, fulfilling adult life had been fortunate.

So, I was closer to 40 than 30 before I began to understand trauma from the inside. Before I discovered the many blind spots I didn’t know I had, the words missing from my vocabulary.

In the first 72 hours, the attack replayed over and over in my mind. Although I’d accessed emergency services, I had no immediate follow-up counselling, so I ended up two weeks later in my GP’s office.

“You’ll have post-traumatic stress.”

I snatched at the term like a lifeline. It wasn’t like I had never heard the term, I just didn’t recognise I was experiencing it until a trusted health professional who knew me, named it for me.

This initiated voracious researching, and I learned that post-traumatic stress can get locked up in our bodies and our minds; but that each can initiate healing in the other. That post-traumatic stress can become post-traumatic stress disorder when the toxic, untethered memories flap about, setting off unnecessary alarm bells in situations that are safe.

Just a few days after the GP visit, I met some friends at a cafe I’d never been to before. Me and my daughter arrived early, and after a while, she needed a toilet stop. In the unfamiliar bathroom, after our business was done, I had my daughter on my hip and I turned out the light to leave, plunging us into darkness. I couldn’t find the door handle and a terror overtook my whole body. Because this was exactly what happened during the attack. Me trying to escape, my daughter on my hip, the deadlocked front door barring our exit.

Reason rushed in to reassure my body, that holding my child 0n my hip in darkness was OK. We were at a beautiful cafe. Friends were due to arrive in about an hour. Back at our table in the dappled sun, there was coffee and cake for me, and a sweet treat for my girl. There was no danger. So, being in the dark carrying my daughter was re-encoded as safe; and the panic evaporated. Like pulling a plug out of the socket.

This was spontaneous for me, but it got me wondering. Maybe post-traumatic stress after a shocking event like 1oth May was an inevitable fairground ride I would have to board. But could I use my mind to tame trauma triggers and avoid developing post-traumatic stress disorder?

I set about this task with the determination of a patient determined to walk again after a spinal accident. In the chaotic aftermath of the assault, I used my body to heal my mind and my mind to heal my body. I had every kind of body therapy you can think of, to rid my cells of the trauma. I summonsed all the perspective, resources, tools and mental practices I had gathered in my life.

But still, I had no language to describe difference between a grown adult like me experiencing trauma and a child. Eventually I gathered the term “single incident trauma” to name what I’d survived on 10 May 2002. Later, I learned that people who have survived childhood trauma have complex post traumatic stress.

There was yet one more term I came to learn. Post traumatic growth. I had not only survived 10 May 2002, I had incorporated bigger lessons, met and learned from survivors of trauma of all kinds.

Post-traumatic growth is a thing. It was named in research in the 1990s. I wondered that this was never mentioned to me in the early years and months after 10 May 2002.

Perhaps parading post traumatic growth too early could seem insensitive. But doesn’t it give us humans something to hope for? Because as I learned from people impacted by childhood trauma, we are wired to heal even from the worst of the worst. Sometimes just the slimmest line of hope from a kind adult reaching into the mess of an unsafe childhood can be enough to climb out of the abyss.

Would I even know any of this if it wasn’t for 10th May? I’m not sure. But I always remember this date. Always.

Happy twenty-fourth survivorversary to me.

If you need to reach out for help or to talk to someone, there are plenty of links on here and here and here