ABSTRACT
The discourse around trauma remains heartbreakingly relevant. In this COVID era, we are experiencing compounding crises as ecological vulnerability, economic precarity, and structural violence rippled across the globe, leaving our communities, our families, even our own selves, deeply wounded, psychologically, emotionally, and physically. As we learn to live with, and alongside, the virus and its consequences, we are seeing an explosion in trauma-informed care practices as well as renewed interest in the management of chronic post-traumatic stress throughout much of the world. Recent years have taught us that a crisis can radically interrupt our lives at any moment. Together, this forms a context in which trauma happens more often than not, and the risk of being traumatized remains high, an omnipresent reality always looming above us, or waiting just around the corner. It’s no wonder that rates of anxiety leapt up during the pandemic (World Health Organization, n.d., 2022) – exacerbating a long-term trend, with rates doubling from 2008 to 2018 (Goodwin et al., 2020).
