Katherine can’t help us find the answer either. What I do know is that trauma doesn’t come from the abuses we suffer—it comes from our loss of dignity afterwards and the failure to make sense of it all by processing it together with our relations. We feel guilt, which is a bit like shame but removed from the collective—individualised, bespoke and driven inwards. It’s not the violence of my youth that keeps me up at night; it’s the shame of that terrible noise I made when I eventually broke down and begged, ‘No, no, please stop.’ I
