I am Florence Koenderink, a facilitator of breaking down and preventing trauma walls. I have a background in Cultural Anthropology and almost 20 years of experience in child protection and alternative care across four continents.
I am passionate about raising awareness of how trauma deeply affects dynamics within and between families, communities, societies, and systems, and of how profound the ripple effects are. Both the negative ripples when nothing is done and the positive ripples when people are supported and provided the conditions that allow them to break down trauma walls.
Understanding how our stress response system affects the way we act and experience the world and how unprocessed experiences and feelings helps us to make sense of much that seemed baffling and guides us to more effective approaches to systems change and doing something about the global polycrisis. I seek partnerships with practitioners and organisations interested in exploring how trauma walls can be identified, taken into account and broken down in their organisation, sector, system, or community, in a concrete, practical way.
My latest book ‘The Trauma Root of Social Work: Beyond the Trauma Wall’ is now available to order. And you can see how it developed with posts from various different drafts on my Substack: https://florencekoenderink.substack.com/.
Feel free to contact me at [email protected] if you are interested in partnering on getting beyond the trauma wall or are looking for technical advice, training, or keynote speeches.