Kim Sanderson: Healing from trauma as a catalyst

Kim Sanderson has worked in crisis and emergency management for a long time. She is the Business Continuity Manager at DBSA, where she has been for about 15 years. Despite her job being focused on the worst case scenario and challenges she has faced, she considers herself an eternal optimist.

However, a key event in March 2017 changed her life and outlook significantly. She and her husband were hijacked at gunpoint and held hostage for around 15 hours.

“This particular traumatic event was one of the biggest tests for both me and my family.” Sanderson said that processing the trauma in counselling and through being present during the resulting court case has shown her how strong she is as a woman.

She said that trauma can have a fundamental impact on us and change us, but that facing this in a healthy way is key to empowering yourself. “The only way you heal is by acknowledging your trauma, acknowledging that it happened, owning the story.”

Resilience strategies, such as those taught by Lucy Hone, have been important to Sanderson to process the trauma. These include understanding that tough times are part of life. Sanderson says that she had a tough upbringing that pushed her to be able to step up and be resourceful, in difficult moments, such as during the hijacking. She explained that courage is found within and one must empower oneself.

“The fact that I was calm and could recollect my whole experience was the very reason why they were caught,” she says. “I made it my mission that they were going to get caught: they were not going to do this to anybody else.”

Secondly, Sanderson said that resilient women are good at choosing what they give attention to, such as gratefulness and positivity. “You have these things in your control, so by managing to focus on the things that you can change, and accept the things that you can’t change, you will also live an empowered life from within.”

Sanderson said that an important strategy for resilience is to ask yourself, “is this helping me or harming me?” For instance, she said that attending the court case of the people who hijacked her was helpful to her and helped her find closure. “These strategies won’t remove your pain, but they will give you the tools to face your pain.”

Sanderson is a beautiful example of how to heal by accepting that the world is imperfect, but that there is beauty to be found in the midst of this, and that self-compassion can help heal and strengthen people.