Dr. Fanike-Kiara Olugbala Young’s new book explores the intersection of trauma, healing, and taking an active role in healing both for yourself and others
What the F%$k is Your Problem?!: Becoming an Active Worker in Healing Your Trauma
By Dr. Fanike-Kiara Olugbala Young, DBH, LCSW, Director of the DBH Program
August 19, 2021
Maya Angelou said, “You may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can decide not to be reduced by them”. Maya Angelou lived a childhood full of traumatic events including discrimination, being raped by her mother’s boyfriend at the age of seven and then being scarred so badly after her uncles killed her perpetrator that she didn’t speak for 5 years. Trauma can have that debilitating impact on a person. It can cause someone to shut completely down and the only way it starts to get better is when that person decides to start healing the wounds that have been inflicted.
My book What the F%$k is Your Problem?!: Becoming an Active Worker in Healing Your Trauma explores the intersections between multiple themes, embracing the side effects of one’s trauma as an individualized journey that can be used to empower others to heal, the power of women and the importance of making the decision to heal, and how learning what it means to be an active worker along the healing journey can empower you and lead to owning your journey. I wrote this book because I found myself as an adult feeling resentment, anger, and sadness from my own childhood traumas and then a series of traumas as an adult. I hadn’t made the decision to begin my healing journey because it was difficult to face.
Taken from first accounts of women that have experienced trauma, some of those events include experiencing childbirth trauma, sexual trauma, the loss of a loved one, domestic violence and infidelity by a partner with a close friend. And although the various traumatic events are discussed throughout the book, it is the defining moments that triggered the women to heal and the healing modalities used that really make this book special. What the F%$k is Your Problem?!: Becoming an Active Worker in Healing Your Trauma speaks to women everywhere that are tired of the side effects of their trauma, want to improve their lives, and are ready to do the work to begin their healing journey.
Maya Angelou decided to not be reduced by the events that happened to her by using her spirit of activism, writing abilities and gift of acting to express her pain but most importantly her healing. It is my hope that others decide to do the same.
