Bobbi Kristina Brown - One of too many

Bobbi Kristina was conceived out of trauma and will have experienced trauma in the womb. Bobbi Kristina was born in to, and raised around, parental trauma. Bobbi Kristina was exposed to domestic violence, substance dependency, chaos, fear, unpredictability and emotionally absent adult carers. Bobbi Kristina lived her whole life with trauma and will have lived in a state of high anxiety and died in a most tragic way, alone, cold and very, very scared. Bobbi Kristina is one of far too many.

UNICEF’S Report on children and domestic violence, Behind Closed Doors

The Impact of Domestic Violence on Children, tells us,

The numbers estimated by the research are staggering. As many as

275 million children worldwide are exposed to violence in the home.

This range is a conservative estimate based on the limitations of the

available data. In actuality, millions more children may be affected by violence

in the home.

For Bobbi Kristina’s life to have true meaning we need to learn the lessons she bravely battled every day to show us.

• Trauma has a genetic component.
•  Trauma IS inter-generational BUT  the environment and care a tiny baby and child receive can make all the difference.
•  Talking about, and understanding, what childhood trauma is and does must be part of daily life if we are to save other children.
• It is possible to live well beyond childhood trauma as we have the capacity to integrate the trauma BUT the right understanding early on is IMPORTANT.
• EVERYONE needs to be ‘trauma informed’ in our communities.
• Early trauma is not ‘game over’ but it can cause mental illness, physical illness and rob a child of their potential.
• No one should work with children, young people or parents or carers UNLESS they understand early trauma and attachment.

What do children like Bobbi Kristina need from us? 

If we choose to work, or have contact with, children, young people and families then we will have be with children who live with domestic violence and abuse. Basic requirements must be that we know what trauma looks like and sounds like in a baby, toddler, child, young person and adult.

Having worked around trauma for 21 years, now I can see trauma it in faces and bodies and hear it in voices. I have worked hard, and continue to do so every day, to understand  the impact of early, developmental trauma.  It isn’t easy but I feel I have a duty to continue with this if I am to work safely and effectively with the vulnerable parents, carers, children and young people’s lives I touch.

The other thing I do is talk about childhood trauma when and wherever I can, as a speaker and trainer, on TV, the Radio but also the train, plane, at the shops, in the park……yes party invitations are few and far between! However, I feel I have to as so many traumatised children and adults are suffering and being judged rather than being helped. Children are still seen as ‘problem kids’, babies as manipulative and adults as ‘nightmares’. Trauma needs compassion not criticism.

I don’t know what or who tried to support Bobbi Kristina’s trauma. I know from reading and studying the effects of developmental trauma that support must be body based to begin with as that is where we store our trauma. Often it is ‘talking therapies’ but these need to have a big element of integrating and working with the body’s trauma to be effective.

Now so much is known about what trauma from pre-birth onwards does to the developing brain and body and how a lack of understanding and trauma-informed intervention, or the wrong label, can be catastrophic. Bobbi Kristina is proof that this knowledge is not yet freely shared, accessed and applied. This MUST be the change.