2024 Trauma & Menopause Conference: The Intersection of Trauma & Menopause

Anita is an experienced community engagement advocate, speaker, podcaster and activist. She has worked, volunteered and advocated for social issues like social inequality, heritage, menopause, and other injustices. She has worked with women, men, and young people on issues related to mental health, ex-offenders, unemployment, and refugees. She grew up in Bedford with her Afro-Caribbean family, which has inspired her to work towards a better community.

Anita hosts the podcast “Black Menopause and Beyond,” where she covers the topic of menopause through interviews and reflections. Her reflections are a combination of her personal experience, the experiences of her peers, and her professional experience working in the community sector. In 2019, she founded Menopause Alliance to support people going through menopause. The organization holds face-to-face peer support groups in her hometown. In 2020, she co-founded Black Women in Menopause with Nina Kuyper, offering face-to-face online meetings via Zoom every two months.

Anita is also a speaker on menopause, community, ethnic minorities, and women’s issues. She has appeared on several media outlets, including BBC Breakfast, ITVX, ITN, The Guardian, Magic FM radio, Marie Claire Magazine, and Stylist.

Chris (they/them) is a Psychotherapist, Clinical Supervisor, Clinical Sexologist and DEI Consultant.They are the Founder and Managing Director of The Queer Therapist, a UK based therapy service providing GSRD (gender, sexuality, relationship diversity) therapy and neurodivergent affirming therapy. They are also the Lead Psychotherapist at Voda.co, the LGBTQIA mental health app.

Chris is Accredited Member with the BACP, an Accredited Professional Member with NCPS, an Advanced Accredited GSRD Therapist with Pink Therapy, a member of WPATH, EPATH, TPATH and a Student Member of COSRT.

David is a freelance psychotherapeutic counsellor based in the East
Midlands.

The Eden Practice, instigated in 2015, was born of need – and compassion,
realising the scant provision for consideration of personal narrative, and the
importance of lived experience. In direct apposition to the current regimen of
pathologising psychological trauma, and the prominence of indorsing emotional
dis-ease as illness. David aspires to the promotion of, engaged listening – and
hearing, empathic understanding, compassion, and support, rather than the
categorisation of emotional response to adverse experiences, and the medicating
of supposed disorders.

David is concerned that the current provision of NHS Talking Therapies –
formerly IAPT, and the reliance upon manualised cognitive behavioural therapy,
and the absence of choice, is entirely inadequate.

David’s conventional training, MA* Trauma Informed Practice; BA*
Humanistic Counselling Practice – has been fundamental to his practice as a
therapist. “I believe that the basic tenets of Rogerian person-centred practices,
and that the therapeutic relationship are essential. However, my own life
experience has been equally as informative”.

Dr Helen Williams is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Management, Swansea University. Helen’s research takes a critical perspective and seeks to understand how common assumptions shape contemporary understandings of work and workers. As a co-founder of Breaking Binaries Research, Helen is particularly interested in exploring diverse identities and bodies and the impact contemporary forms of work has on these. Her other interests include the use and development of qualitative methods, with a particular focus on multi-modal approaches.

Helen researches the intersection of menopause, trauma, and neurodiversity. A challenging surgical menopause interrupted Helen’s career at the age of 41, and she now advocates for a womb-to-tomb holistic approach to hormonal healthcare to ensure the landscape changes for future generations. Helen is co-founder of the Global Menopause Inclusive Collective, and she writes extensively on menopause and childhood sexual abuse.

Emily is an expert in the field of embodied trauma processing, creating safety and emotional self-regulation through yoga, breath and movement. An internationally trained yoga teacher since 2007 and establishing Yoganova, Emily has worked with diverse populations, within, schools, charities the public sector and private practice. She later widened her experience becoming parent, children & young peoples’ therapist, CAMHS Specialist, self-regulation therapist, trainer and professional speaker, founding the companyFreedom In Me. She honed her knowledge of harnessing blended polyvagal states through lived experience, practicing yoga during her years working in a war zone as a humanitarian worker for the International Red Cross and UN. She draws from a wide range of practices from yin & restorative to high energy kundalini inspired movement, presented in simple and accessible ways, whilst working to increase the evidence-base and profile of yoga as a tool for trauma through publishing research, working with parents, children and teachers on co-regulation and connection to create Trauma Informed Schools. She advocates practice that releases the practitioner from attempting to hold still, which has great application for ADHD, trauma, emotional dis-regulation and wherever these overlap. She works with both adults and children, has delivered training to teachers, yogis, public sector workers and therapists, debunking the mystification of yoga practice and promoting simple fun tools that simply help people feel better. Whilst theoretically grounded in polyvagal principles, her work is essentially experiential – so come along and join the fun way to access the power and the freedom inside everyone of us.

Emmy Manson is a proud Snuneymuxw member dedicated to developing strong leadership and opportunities to live their best life. As an elected Council woman for her Nation Emmy has been a champion of addressing trauma and finding pathways to bring love and joy to her community.
Emmy brings a wealth of experience in serving the needs of families and developing open and a bridge to building relationships for the betterment of the world.
Emmy’s career has been lifetime of service in the Mental Health and Wellness field provide and has Board experience with VIU and with the Homelessness work in the city of Nanaimo. As a woman who is now a grandmother sees her work as doing her own healing work to not pass on her pain and trauma to her children. She strives daily to make our ancestors proud of all the work they did before us to ensure she got to be alive and that we are still thriving today.
Emmy became connected to Roots to Thrive as a participant and was able to experience first-hand the healing that is possible within community.

Emmy is now a strong advocate of how Indigenous people can benefit from healing their trauma by utilizing different modalities such as psychedelic assisted therapy within a community of practice setting.

Emmy is grateful to have the opportunity to share her knowledge and lived experience.

Lynda holds an MA degree in Transpersonal Studies with a focus on Spiritual Mentoring and Feminine Spirituality as well as a Diploma in Tarot for Women. She is also a Certified Trauma-Informed Yoga Instructor, Spiritual Guidance Mentor, Level II Reiki Practitioner, Transpersonal Hypnosis Guide, and author of a memoir/research project about her Spiritual Emergency titled, Menopause in Crisis~ When Spiritual Emergency Meets the Feminine Midlife Passage. The focus of her writing and healing practice is to offer insights and support to women who are dealing with the challenges of perimenopause and the years beyond.

Roxanne Kerr is the founder and CEO of Trauma Healing Together, a charity based in Scotland offering counselling to survivors of psychological trauma. Roxanne is an experienced and qualified clinical certified trauma specialist with a master’s in counselling from Abertay University and a certificate in complex trauma and dissociation from the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. Roxanne has extensive experience in working with survivors of childhood sexual abuse and individuals with mental health conditions such as bipolar and schizophrenia. Roxanne founded Trauma Healing Together in 2020 as she felt there was more that could be done to support those struggling with their mental health as a result of trauma, and wanted to make a sustainable change. She is trained in Crisis Management and is member of the British Association for Counsellors and Psychotherapy.

I yearn for truth, and a way to be in the world that makes sense while honouring myself and all of creation. This has led me to a vocation whereby I support people on their journeys of change. I am a trauma-informed occupational therapist specialising in neurological rehabilitation.

As a neuro-occupational therapist, I guide people to make sense of the changes to their lives as a result of a neurological event that has caused a change to how one is in the world. I have found this approach immensely helpful when I consider the changes to my life as a result of an early menopause without having had children: There is a loss of a role and identity that I hadn’t yet had and a change to how I am in the world. This is a change that requires support and loving compassion.

I have completed the year-long course in compassionate inquiry which is an approach developed by Dr Gabor Mate for working with trauma. I am now a trauma-informed neuro-occupational therapist. Deeply embedded in this approach is the belief that there is intelligence and dignity in all of our experiences, including challenging and difficult experiences, and a way back to wholeness and sense. This has inspired me to search for the intelligence, dignity and wholeness in my experience of being a postmenopausal woman with no biological children.

I look forward to learning and sharing with you all.

Siobhan is an educator, musician, song writer and type 1 Diabetic heading straight for
the Menopause years.

Zoë lives between Hampshire, UK and Ibiza, Spain. She has four adult children who have all fledged, more animals than the Ark ever had, instructed Pilates for 15 years, speaks fluent French, good Spanish and has been living her alcohol-free life since March 2019. She is a Senior Coach in behaviour change, working for Annie Grace ‘This Naked Mind’, in helping people make alcohol small and irrelevant in their lives. Zoë also runs her own private coaching business, is currently a student of Gabor Mate and is working towards her counselling certification.