In 2018, I was in a road traffic collision. A speeding van hit my stationary car as I waited to turn into my driveway. The impact knocked me unconscious, and I suffered a head injury.

A truck driver who witnessed the crash blocked the road and climbed into the back of my wrecked car. Though I have no memory of him, I later learned that he held my head up and spoke gently to me, reassuring me that help was on the way. Fire crews cut me from the vehicle, and I was taken to the hospital. My first clear memory was waking up in A&E with my family beside me.

A few days after returning home, I was resting in the living room when I saw someone in a high-vis jacket walk past the window. I didn’t recognize him. My husband answered the door and brought him in, saying, “Someone’s here to see you, Deb.”

I had never seen this young man before—until he spoke. “How are you?” he asked. The moment I heard his voice, emotion overwhelmed me. “It’s you,” I said. Suddenly, the memory returned—not his face, but the feeling of him holding my head, whispering, You’re going to be okay. Hang on in there.

Until that moment, I had no conscious memory of him. But my body had remembered.

Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score explains how trauma isn’t just stored in our minds—it’s held in our nervous system, our senses, and our bodies. My experience was proof of this. The sound of his voice unlocked something my rational mind couldn’t access, bringing back not just the memory, but the safety and reassurance he had given me in that moment of crisis.

Trauma isn’t just about what we consciously remember. It’s about what our bodies hold onto—and that’s why healing has to go beyond words.