Each year in Australia, more than 119,000 women and children seek refuge from domestic and family violence—including over 31,000 children under the age of 10. These families often arrive at shelters carrying the weight of trauma. But too often, they also carry...
Sleep isn’t just rest. For a child, it’s regulation. It’s repair. It’s the brain’s nightly reboot and the nervous system’s quiet recovery. In children impacted by trauma, sleep is often the first thing to break and the last to mend. Children exposed to domestic...
Why Sleep Is Foundational to Healing When a child lives through trauma, their nervous system locks into high alert—flooding their brain and body with stress hormones that make rest feel impossible. Sleep becomes light, broken, or disappears altogether. And even long...
After prolonged exposure to stress or danger, a mother’s body can remain on high alert. Elevated levels of cortisol and adrenaline keep her alert during the day and wired at night. Sleep becomes fragmented or elusive, and with each night of disrupted rest, her ability...
Sleep isn’t just a break from waking life. It’s when the brain repairs, the body recalibrates, and the nervous system restores its sense of internal safety. For children and mothers recovering from trauma, sleep is not a luxury—it is a profound form of medicine. When...
When someone experiences trauma, we often focus on what happened. But just as important is what’s happening inside their brain—often long after the event has passed. And if sleep is disrupted, the brain’s ability to heal is compromised. Trauma affects several key...
