by Jenna Brown Recently, during a post-birth debrief with a colleague, we had a misunderstanding that stayed with me. For context, the labor I had just attended as a doula ended in an unplanned surgical birth. My client had a voice every step of the way, and the final say in all decisions that were made. They had a great team of collaborative providers, and neither their OB nor midwife rushed their decision making process. I shared all of this (and other details) with my colleague, and also mentioned that my client had told me that they felt traumatized, so I was helping them find the appropriate postpartum mental health care.  “Why?” my colleague asked. “Why… what?” I responded. “Why do they feel traumatized? It sounds like their experience was a good one.” I honestly can’t remember what I said in the moment, but I do know that I was taken aback. I have had more time to think about this interaction, and I wanted to speak to it here, as I think what I have drawn from it may be an important reminder for many of us.  We do not get to decide what is traumatic for someone else. Full stop.  Anything that overwhelms a person’s capacity to cope can be traumatic. Trauma is relative and subjective. Whether or not someone experiences an event as traumatic has to do with a number of situational factors, and the degree to which something may be traumatic to an individual is influenced by resiliency – which is not a fixed point. There can be, “big T Trauma,” and, “little t trauma,” which is not an invalidation of anyone’s experience, but rather an acknowledgement that trauma exists on a spectrum.  I think that what my colleague questioned during our debrief is summed up by something that family professional Robin Glasco Jones, often says, “not every drama is a trauma.” So then what is the difference? One of the key distinctions is that trauma is sensory, not cognitive. Trauma attacks, distorts, and disfigures a person’s identity.  Which brings me to a conversation I had with a different colleague who was feeling distraught about the last several births she had attended, who said, “as a doula I am supposed to protect people from trauma, and –“ No. Full stop.  If trauma is relative and subjective, and we don’t get to decide what is traumatic for…

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