May is National Mental Health month. A month where we focus on fighting stigma, providing support, educating the public, and raising awareness for mental health. May is also National Trauma Awareness month. While this may have begun with a focus on physical trauma. We now know that psychological trauma is just as real and just as damaging as the physical injuries associated with trauma. In fact, mental or emotional trauma can often take far longer to heal than physical injuries.

There are many similarities between physical and emotional wounds, and the healing of those wounds. However, one important difference is that emotional wounds are invisible. With physical injuries, there is often visible evidence; a scar, a missing limb, a wheelchair. These visible wounds typically evoke kindness, compassion, and validation. However, emotional wounds that people carry are not visible to others. They can only be known by the telling of the story. Since the story itself is so painful to tell, people often suffer in silence, their wounds remaining invisible and known only through the unusual array of symptoms that they produce.

During this month, we not only strive to bring awareness to mental health, we also want to focus on survivors of both physical and psychological trauma. May 17th is National Trauma Survivor Day. We’ve included our pictures below and on our Facebook page commemorating this day. It is our goal to draw inspiration from and provide support to survivors of trauma and their caregivers, opening the road to their recovery from trauma. There is hope. There is healing. #TraumaSurvivorsDay #NTSD