Listening Lounge
- Abi Yardimci
- 11 hours ago
- 8 min read
Through the lens of Equity, Diversity, Equality & Inclusion, a think piece on 'From Trauma to Transformation' - honouring diversity in perinatal post-traumatic growth.
On Tues 27th January 2026, we were delighted to host our online, 'Listening Lounge'. This free, podcast-style workshop is part of our 'Trusted Spaces' workstream, where we bring together members of the grassroots perinatal mental health community to explore how to genuinely nurture and embrace EDEI within our services.
The Listening Lounge is a Hearts & Minds Partnership project brought to you by our brilliant 'Root Makers' - a collaborative and diverse team of people from our sector working alongside Hearts & Minds to help work towards a more inclusive and equitable sector. You can find out more about the Root Makers here.
For this Listening Lounge, we focused on the topic of, 'From Trauma to Transformation' - honouring diversity in perinatal post-traumatic growth.
We explored our theme through a springboard talk, deep-level listening, a recorded poetry performance, an optional wellbeing exercise and a generous panel discussion derived from lived experience with plenty of room for change-making conversation. Our speaker was Aileen White, (My Birth Support CiC) and joining us on the panel were Alex Paterson (Infant Mental Health and LGBTQ+ Families Advocate) and Ameena Rahman (Sister Circle). The whole Lounge was held and hosted by Lauren Parr (Make Birth Better).
This particular Lounge was special for two reasons:
It was the last Lounge in our current series of 6 (we hope to bring you more and are currently working hard to fund a future series)
It was entirely co-produced and delivered by members of our amazing Root Maker team
The panel very generously and sensitively shared their own lived personal and professional experience of hope and growth after trauma. The medium of storytelling helped us find exploratory areas for discussion and the chat was reflective of not only the immense expertise within the sector, but also the unwavering commitment to working with and for ALL families experiencing perinatal trauma.
As a means of continuing this theme, Aileen has written a think piece on 'From Trauma to Transformation' and we are delighted to share it here, on the Hearts & Minds blog.
POST-TRAUMATIC GROWTH & THE POWER OF STORY
Stories. They have this sort of power. They have this way of acting like medicine and can get right to the heart of what's needed as we listen to them. So as you read this blog post, I invite you to sit back and get comfortable - to notice what that medicine might be here for you today.
Once upon a time, in a land not that far away, many, many years ago (but also just yesterday), there was a girl. This girl whirled and twirled and made things happen. This girl was fearless and climbed trees and rode bikes and even once terrified her mother by climbing out of windows onto scaffolding.
This wild girl crafted so many amazing, wondrous things. She loved stories, so many stories, and she took each one to heart. Stories of lands at the top of a magic tree, stories of a powerful ring to be destroyed in a volcano. So many stories. And she also collected stories of birth.
Now, this little girl grew up and got married and had a successful, exciting career. It was really quite wondrous. Nevertheless, people kept asking, "When will you have children? Do you want children? When are you going to have a baby?" But she didn't want a baby. Everything about giving birth and parenting sounded fearful and overwhelming. In fact, she often wondered why she was wired to notice all the worst case scenarios that could possibly happen.
And one day, after another one of those conversations, her boss (who was a very good boss) said, "It's almost like this fear of birth defines you."
And this woman thought, "Yes. If you keep asking about it, it does."
Now, after a little time, and wondering how this was so significant for her, she went to the doctor's and had an important conversation. She asked, "Why am I so scared? And what do I do about it? And if I got pregnant, can I just have a caesarean?"
And the doctor turned to her, his whole body turned right round in his chair, and said, "Has no one told you that you can do this? You were made to do this. Designed to do this."
But no one had ever said that to her.
She didn't know about hormones. She didn't know about physiology. She didn't know about positions and mindset and hypnotherapy for birth. She didn't know because she wasn't initiated.
She also didn't know just how strong she was.
Let’s pause our story there (but I promise to come back to that little girl).
Although this young woman didn't experience those stories of birth herself, as a neurodivergent person, she'd internalised them as if they were her own. And that vicarious trauma really affected her. And she didn't want to have a baby because it threatened so many of the things she was clinging to that made life feel more doable, more bearable... more safe.
We might wonder, "What exactly is trauma?" Each of us might have our own interpretation and our own experience of something we call traumatic. So here’s a straightforward, down-to-earth definition from the Mind website:
“Trauma is when we experience very stressful, frightening or distressing events that are difficult to cope with or out of our control. It could be one incident, or an ongoing event that happens over a long period of time.”
And we might assume that trauma lies in the experience, but actually, the more I learn about this, and the more we research it, it's not really the experience as such. It's the stories we tell ourselves, because of that experience. It's what we think, feel and believe about ourselves and our reality because of what happened.
Trauma shows up in different ways for different people, and what we think is traumatic might not be traumatic to somebody else. In fact, a number of people could have exactly the same experience, but some might feel it was traumatic and some not. That’s because it's actually more about our prior hopes, dreams, expectations and post event interpretations. It's about that internal sense of whether we're safe (or not) that can make it so hard.
For many people, it can start with events in childhood (Adverse Childhood Experiences or ACEs) and that can make us feel more traumatised when we're older. Or it can develop from a more recent experience.
It can also be an experience that you personally, or many people in your community or family, experienced. It can be from a series of events or drip, drip, drip, just not quite feeling right, not quite feeling normal, not quite feeling accepted. And for those of us from minority communities, we know what that feels like.
It can also be from hearing or seeing other people's experiences. As birth workers, we could feel traumatised by what we hear from others and that ongoing deep listening to the next story of horror from those you serve.
For me, it was those stories in my childhood of my mum's own birth experiences and seeing birthing scenes on TV where everybody is screaming and panicking.
So where does this idea of post traumatic growth come from? It’s not new although the language that we might use about it is becoming more formalised with research. Just think of songs - "What Doesn't Kill You Makes You Stronger" by Kelly Clarkson; fairy tales of strength coming from adversity. Even one of the oldest stories ever translated, the story of Inanna's descent to the underworld, and how she came back stronger after a death experience (1900 – 1600 BCE). Closer to home, you might have heard stories from loved ones or your own stories of becoming wiser after a difficult lesson. We also learn so much from mistakes as humans. It is interesting to notice how many examples there are of this idea of growth coming from the hardest times.
I know that not everybody grows out of the hardest times. Sometimes they break us, and we never recover. Sometimes we suffer, and it doesn't change. It might just be too much and take us to the brink. Just to survive can be enough for many, so be gentle with yourself and those you serve.
However, as birth workers, wouldn't it be wonderful if there were ways we could help make growth more likely? Let me share with you some research about post traumatic growth and I hope it will inspire you as much as it did me.
Looking at the left side of the diagram below, we can read about the factors that make growth more likely. The right side explains what growth can look like in different people. When I first saw this I was excited to see practical signposting of how we might be able to help ourselves and others.
In our perinatal mental health support:
We can consider how to create spaces for people to be more honest about where they're at, with a sense of hopeful optimism
Could we offer the opportunity for people to share more of who they are, if they want to, even if it’s just introducing themselves as more than “Jack’s mum” or “Jaspreet’s dad”
Where can we give people back a sense of control in sessions and in planning through consultation and choice?
Could you teach some different coping strategies beyond distraction and avoidance?
In my story, you might hear examples of these five domains of post-traumatic growth, examples of finding personal strength, having closer relationships, a greater appreciation for life, new possibilities, and also, for me there was definitely spiritual development.
So let’s get back to that story . . .
What helped that little girl who became a young woman? Well, many things helped, and they are still helping:
Birth books that taught me that I was designed to do this and how
Courses, therapy, research
Internalising new stories and releasing the old ones which did not serve me
New friends
The power of witnessing someone else in labour
Being able to have a caesarean birth, and later going on to have a water birth at home
My faith and the image of myself and God which became so much more loving and compassionate
Birthing From Within – a fantastic and supportive organisation who I was trained and transformed by
Contemplation, journaling, Emotional Freedom Technique
A new willingness to face fears (key for a neurodivergent person like me)
Eventually, in terms of transformation, I was able to go from fear to freedom, and that is definitely an ongoing process
Healing from tokophobia, that fear of birth was a journey over many years. On the way, becoming a mum of two and retraining to help hundreds of others find their own freedom from fear and to even flourish. Most, if not all, of this story shows those 5 domains of post-traumatic growth one step at a time.
My daughter recently turned 15, so all in all it's been about a 16-year journey since I talked to that doctor. And I’m remembering that boss who said, "It's almost like this fear of birth defines you." Well no, not anymore. It has transformed into something that enables me to help others.
And I hope that as you read this, you might start to notice more of the stories you tell yourself. That you might seek help, support and healing where needed and if possible. I hope you might find your next steps and growth too.
If you'd like to find out more about Aileen's work at My Birth Support, Please visit the website and / or Instagram page. You can also email Aileen at: aileen@mybirth.org.uk
Special thanks to our whole Root Makers team who have worked on the Listening Lounge and made this first series of six such a huge success.
If you'd like to find out about other Trusted Spaces that Hearts & Minds provides for the VCSE in perinatal mental health, please visit this page of our website. You can also sign up to our newsletter to make sure you don't miss a beat.
