Quiet Confessions, Episode 6: Surviving Traumaversary Season

In this latest episode of Quiet Confessions, Chelsea shares their experience navigating “traumaversary season”—the string of dates that mark some of the most painful and traumatic events of their postpartum journey. From a scheduled C-section that spiraled into postpartum hemorrhage, to multiple psychiatric hospitalizations, and a later brain hemorrhage caused by a pituitary tumor, Chelsea opens up about what it means to survive these anniversaries year after year. 

This episode isn’t about silver linings; it’s about truth, survival, and holding space for the messy and painful parts of healing. Whether you’ve experienced perinatal trauma, mental health struggles, or just know the sting of an unwanted anniversary, this one’s for you. 

Key Takeaways: 

• Traumaversaries—trauma anniversaries—can bring up intense emotions, especially in the perinatal mental health space.
• Chelsea shares their own timeline of trauma, including a traumatic C-section, hemorrhage, and multiple hospitalizations.
• They speak candidly about surviving postpartum mental illness without romanticizing the journey.
• There’s no need to find a “silver lining” in trauma—sometimes it just sucks, and that’s valid.
• Community and tools can help make each year more manageable, even if it doesn’t get easier.

Sound Bites:

1. “Every year, I wouldn’t say it necessarily gets easier, but I gain more tools to navigate the traumaversaries.”
2. “I don’t believe these things happen to teach us a lesson. Sometimes things just happen, and they suck.”
3. “I was bleeding out on my bathroom floor. And then I was treated inhumanely by people who were supposed to care.”
4. “Would I go through what I went through again? Absolutely not. But I wouldn’t trade my children for anything.”
5. “You didn’t deserve what happened to you. And neither did I. That truth matters.”

This episode discusses topics that may be triggering for some individuals. Please check the show notes for more information and be mindful of your own mental health and comfort levels.

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Transcript

Chelsea Myers (00:00)
Hey, welcome to Quiet Confessions, a mini Quiet Connections episode where I sit down and chat with you about my personal journey. I'm happy to have you here with me. Today I am going to talk about Traumaverseries. If you've never heard the term Traumaversery, I will tell you what it is. It's honestly exactly what it sounds like. A Traumaversery is...

the anniversary of any form of trauma that happened to you or in your life or to someone that you know. For a lot of us in this space, the maternal mental health space, the parent space, it has a lot to do with our perinatal or postpartum experiences is where our trauma lies. But trauma can come from anywhere.

Trauma can come from your childhood. Trauma can come in your adult years before you were a parent, way after becoming a parent. And that anniversary of that trauma may bring about some feelings, some big feelings. And they may not. It's a personal thing. But I'm going to talk to you about my traumaversaries because I am right at the beginning of traumaversary season

And when I say Traumaversary season, holy moly, it lasts months. There are very few, if not, there may only be one or two months in the whole calendar year that don't contain a Traumaversary but I look at this as the start of my Traumaversary calendar because my youngest was born on June 27th.

And as I'm recording this, is June 22nd. It's actually my wedding anniversary. And yes, I am out celebrating it with my partner, but I have a little bit of time to myself. So of course, I'm recording an episode. But my daughter's birth, my youngest daughter's birth started a journey that I am still on. But

journey that would be the most difficult of my entire life and it lasted for I mean time is relative but for me I I say I missed the first six months of my daughter's life due to my

perinatal mood and anxiety disorders and being hospitalized for those several times and we'll get into that. And on top of my birth trauma and my postpartum hemorrhage later and then beyond that, you know, rather than just pile them all on you, I'll give you a little bit of a timeline. So.

My youngest was born on June 27th and it was a scheduled C-section. So I went into it feeling pretty confident to be completely honest because I knew I wasn't going to labor. knew that like I knew the day she was coming. I knew around what hour she would be coming. I'd never had major surgery before so that was scary and I was scared. But I was comforted in

having some form of control. And she was a C-section because she was breech and there was only one doctor in the whole hospital who would deliver a breech baby vaginally and we weren't sure if we would be able to get that doctor. And I honestly just did not want to put her at risk unnecessarily. And we did all the things to try to get her to turn, but she was stubborn.

and she has remained that way and she did not turn.

My c-section was terrifying. I don't know how much blood I lost, but I do know that immediately following the surgery, was unwell. And it was evident. And we didn't know what was going on. But we were sort of folk. I had like

I had sort of a golden hour. My daughter was in the NICU for a little while. And then when we were finally reunited, I took her and I held her and I felt like I felt complete and that lasted for about an hour. And then I became very, very sick. I developed a spinal headache from the procedure

no one from anesthesia could come see me. So I was suffering through a spinal headache, which again, if you're unfamiliar with that, it is probably one of the most painful headaches you could ever experience in your life, worse than a migraine. I have something to compare it to now, and I will get to that later.

in this episode, but I suffered through that for over 24 hours because no one could come see me to do the blood patch procedure to remedy the situation. So I was cycling between bags of ice on my head, not sleeping, couldn't really hold my daughter anymore because I couldn't move. It was very positional. The pain would increase any time I would be

upright or move at all. So my experience in the hospital, I also started like feeling incredibly anxious, like hyper anxious and just in a constant state of.

like fight or flight. And I couldn't explain why. And I just begged to leave even though I felt so sick. I couldn't eat. My head was hurting. I was afraid of everything and nothing at the same time. And it was horrifying. They let me go. They let me go home after I think we were only in the hospital for two or three days.

I think it was the third day and I was still so sick and that started my whole journey to I think it was two or three days later. I hemorrhaged at home. I had been ill. I still wasn't eating. I still wasn't sleeping. And I just said I'm gonna go lay down for a minute and I laid down literally for less than two minutes and then I just stood up and

I everything come out of me and yeah, I hemorrhaged at home. My older daughter was right there, my husband was right there, my in-laws were two minutes away, they were already on their way over. They got there just before the ambulance and whisked my daughter upstairs and I was bleeding out on my bathroom floor and I was taken to the local hospital.

where they were not equipped to deal with my blood loss so I was transferred to the bigger hospital where they did not treat me in a very humane way. the two doctors slash midwife slash OBGYN, I don't know who they were because they really didn't introduce themselves to me and they were talking about me over me. And then they, content warning, I'm gonna be.

a little bit medically graphic here, but they just said, okay, we're going to reach inside and see what we're dealing with and immediately reached inside of me into my uterus and I writhed in pain and the bleeding got worse and they said, okay, we're going to the OR. So I received several blood transfusions and an emergency DNC and a back ray balloon and I was in the hospital recovering from that. And I had just...

left the hospital. And that kicked off my OCD into hyperdrive, which we talked about in the last episode. I was reassurance seeking, like it was my job, that any doctor or nurse who walks into my room, is this gonna happen to me again? Am I gonna be okay? Am I gonna die? And the doctor, one of the doctors in particular, was

so frustrated with me. She just kept saying, I can't keep answering this question. I'm telling you the same thing. We can't tell you if it will happen again, but it's highly unlikely. There was one nurse who was so kind and she's the nurse who helped me shower. Finally, I'd been in the same bloody nightgown for two days. No one had helped me change. No one had helped me clean myself up.

It was pretty awful. So that experience was terrible. So that whole, I bunch all of that up together as the first series of traumas. So the birth of my daughter, my daughter's birthday is always very difficult for me because I get flashbacks and then I get flashbacks of my hemorrhage and yeah.

And then from there, as we talked about, I did have very severe acute perinatal mood and anxiety disorders. I continued to be very, very ill and I wasn't eating for weeks and I felt so sick and I felt so scared that I became suicidal. And I was

I was hospitalized three separate times.

The first time I was hospitalized, I went to the local hospital and waited in an ER bed for three or four days before they found me a bed at a mental health facility at the southernmost part of my state. It was a three and a half hour drive in an ambulance down to this mental health facility. The second...

psychiatric inpatient stay. I had only been home for a day from my first inpatient stay and my therapist got me a bed at UNC Chapel Hills perinatal psychiatric inpatient unit. So we got on a plane and flew me down to North Carolina and I stayed there.

for just shy of a month. And my third, I had been home for about three weeks and I was about to start an outpatient treatment at an outpatient treatment center because I was still really struggling when on Christmas day I reached another breaking point and became suicidal again.

And had my third hospitalization, which was, I think, two weeks and my most horrific. It was terrible. It was very inhumane. And we can get into the hospitalizations in different episodes, but...

those are big traumas that around, so that all happened in succession. So I had my daughter in June, then I had my hemorrhage in July, August, I was struggling. September, I was okay for a little while, and then October, Halloween was the last time I had felt somewhat normal.

By the beginning of November, I was in my first psychiatric unit. Through Thanksgiving and beyond, I was in North Carolina. And Christmas Day, past New Year and beyond, I was in my third inpatient stay.

Beyond that, and I did a lot beyond that, but in March of last year, I had a brain hemorrhage from a pituitary tumor. And since then have become disabled and chronically ill and it's an ongoing journey. And this pituitary tumor very likely had been there from the start of all of my postpartum challenges because

They are more common before childbirth and it's more likely that they rupture right after childbirth, but lucky me, it didn't and it lasted. But the symptoms and the signs, everything that was happening to my body and all of these things that I didn't understand can all be explained by a pituitary tumor. And it ruptured and it bled into my brain. So I was in the intensive care unit and then I was in the neurosurge floor. And yeah, it is still an ongoing journey, but.

And that was in March. Because of all of these things, I have PTSD. And like we've talked about in previous episodes, I am triggered by things, all things medical, doctor's offices, hospital visits, medical shows. I'm going through some exposure therapy where I have to watch medical shows.

and I have flashbacks frequently. have flashbacks and I can literally feel, hear, see, smell all of the things like I'm right back in all of those situations. All of that to say, I'm in that season right now and I'm surviving. That's a line that my therapist like sees with me and it's one that I remind myself a lot.

Every year, I wouldn't say it necessarily gets easier, but I gain more tools to navigate the traumaversaries. So this year, am I still having flashbacks? Yep, I sure am. Am I still in a heightened state of anxiety and depression? Sure am. The state of our nation isn't helping things, but I am surviving.

I'm getting up every day, reminding myself I am not in that place anymore, reminding myself that I am safe, looking at my family, and you guys know me, I hate silver linings. I do not like the idea of them. I don't like having to come up with something good from every bad situation. That's okay if that works for you. It doesn't work for me.

I feel like what I went through was not okay and I didn't deserve it and I don't necessarily have to find some lesson that I needed to learn or anything along those lines. I will say I'm thankful for all of you and for the community that we've built through Quiet Connection and that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't have gone through what I went through. But.

It wasn't okay. I didn't deserve it. And you didn't deserve whatever it was that you went through. None of us do. And I don't believe that these things happen to teach us a greater lesson. Sometimes things happen and they suck. And these things happened and they sucked. But I'm looking at my family, knowing that I'm safe, knowing that I'm loved, knowing that I have so much love for them, and that...

I wouldn't trade them for anything. Would I go through what I went through again? Absolutely not. I would not. No. Never. That's not an option. But I would never trade away my children, the relationship I have with my partner, or the things that have grown from this experience. So no, I'm not thankful for what happened to me, but I am grateful.

for what has come of it. So Traumaviruses, whether you are a parent or not, if you have experienced trauma and you are triggered or much more aware of big feelings around the time of year that these things happened to you, I see you, your feelings are so valid, you're not alone.

You're not alone and I'm not alone. And I'm going to wrap it up there today because again, I could go down so many rabbit holes, but we'll save that for another week. Thanks for sitting with me and I'll see you next Thursday.