Trauma does not sit in the past as a bad recollection. It reorganizes a developing brain, an immune system, and a stress response — and then bills the body for the rest of its life. This is why it can be measured, why it follows a dose-response curve, and why it appears in mortality data decades later.
Two children can live through the same event and carry it differently. What matters is whether the child could cope, and whether anyone helped them.
Most people carrying childhood trauma have never been assessed, never been treated, and have never used the word about themselves.
The wound is inflicted before eighteen. The bill arrives at thirty, at fifty, at seventy.