When I was working through my own healing from childhood trauma, one of the most powerful parts of my journey involved working with rooms and understanding how environment plays a role in both recovery and child abuse prevention. I spent considerable time doing healing exercises focused on recreating my childhood bedrooms as part of memory recall work.
The physical environments we inhabit as children hold so much energy and connection to our experiences, both traumatic and healing.
So when I discovered Room Redux and met its founder, Susie Vybrial, I felt an immediate and profound connection to her mission. Here was someone creating exactly what I wish had existed for my five-year-old self, a transformed space that says “you are loved, you are safe, and you deserve beauty in your life.”
The Power of Environment in Healing from Childhood Trauma
During Child Abuse Prevention Month, we often focus on stopping abuse before it happens, and that work is absolutely critical for child abuse prevention. But Susie’s organization addresses something equally important: what happens after the abuse is discovered? How do we support children in their healing journey when they’re returning every day to the very room where their trauma occurred?
As Susie told me in our conversation, she worked as a family advocate at a children’s advocacy center for over three years. Parents would bring their children to counseling every week, and she’d hear the same heartbreaking patterns: “She’s starting to talk in counseling, but she’s still not sleeping in her bed. She’s making a pallet on the floor. He’s sleeping on the couch. They don’t want to have friends over. They’re making bad grades. They’re just not thriving.”
These children were going through counseling, receiving professional support, but still struggling because they were returning to environments filled with triggers and traumatic memories.
This is where trauma informed design becomes essential for healing from childhood trauma.
What Room Redux Does for Child Abuse Prevention Month and Beyond
Room Redux is a nonprofit organization that transforms the rooms and lives of children who have faced sexual and physical abuse. Here’s what makes their approach so powerful: they do this anonymously, which means the children never see the volunteers, and they complete the entire transformation in one day. The child goes to school or stays elsewhere, and when they return, their space has been completely reimagined as a sanctuary of safety, comfort, and love.
As Susie explained, “Even if abuse didn’t happen in that room, if it happened at grandpa’s or a hotel or outside, wherever it happened, they still deserve to know that they’re loved and cared about by people who expect nothing from them.”
This is trauma informed care for children at its most tangible and immediate level.
Creating a physical space that supports healing the inner child by providing what every child deserves: a room that feels safe, beautiful, and entirely their own.
The Statistics We Can’t Ignore
When Susie speaks about child sexual abuse prevention, she shares statistics that make people’s eyes go wide: one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before the age of 18. And that’s only what’s reported. People often respond with disbelief. “That doesn’t happen here.”
But it does happen. Everywhere. In every community, every socioeconomic level, every state, every country. This is why Child Abuse Prevention Month exists to shine a light on this reality and mobilize compassion into action.
As Susie powerfully stated: “Compassion plus action equals results.” Awareness is crucial for child abuse prevention, but awareness alone falls short.
We need people and organizations taking concrete action to protect children and support their healing from childhood trauma when prevention fails.
Trauma Informed Design: Creating Healing Environments
What Susie and Room Redux do goes far beyond interior decorating. This is trauma informed design, the intentional creation of physical environments that support healing and wellbeing. Think about how you feel when you come home after a difficult day. You want to kick off your shoes, sink into comfortable furniture, surround yourself with colors and textures that soothe you. These are fundamental to our wellbeing.
Children who’ve experienced abuse need this even more desperately. They need a space that soothes rather than triggers their trauma. They need a room that feels like a sanctuary filled with their best experiences. They need an environment that supports healing the inner child by providing safety, comfort, and a tangible reminder that they deserve good things.
This is trauma informed care for children manifested in the most practical, immediate way possible through the transformation of their daily environment.
Healing the Inner Child Through Environmental Change
My own experience with inner child healing taught me how powerfully our physical environments are connected to our memories and healing journey. When I was doing intensive healing work, I engaged in exercises around recreating my childhood bedrooms as part of memory recall work. The rooms we inhabit as children hold deep connections to our experiences and our sense of self.
Children lack the resources adults have. A traumatized five-year-old, like I was when my abuse began, lacks the capacity to do that kind of environmental healing work on their own. They need adults to create safe spaces for them. They need what Room Redux provides: an immediate, dramatic transformation that sends a clear message. “This is your space now. This is safe. This is beautiful. This is yours.”
This kind of environmental intervention supports healing the inner child in ways that complement other therapeutic approaches.
Whether a child is working through EMDR for childhood trauma, traditional talk therapy, or other healing approaches, having a safe space to return to every day amplifies that healing work.
The Ripple Effects of Trauma Informed Care
When Susie shared stories from her work at the children’s advocacy center, I was struck by how the room transformations created ripple effects throughout children’s lives. Children who struggled to sleep in their beds suddenly felt safe enough to sleep in their transformed rooms. Kids who were struggling academically began improving their grades. Children who had isolated themselves started having friends over again.
This is the power of trauma informed design combined with trauma informed care for children. When we address the environmental component of trauma, we remove one significant barrier to healing.
Reframing Negative Self Talk Through Environmental Support
One unexpected benefit of trauma informed design for children is how it can help with reframing negative self talk. Children who’ve been abused often internalize messages that they lack worth, that they’re unlovable, that they deserve bad things. These beliefs become the foundation for negative self talk that can persist into adulthood without intervention.
When a child walks into a beautifully transformed room, a space that was created specifically for them by people who’ve never even met them, it challenges those harmful beliefs. The room itself becomes a tangible message: “You are worth this effort. You deserve beauty. You are loved.”
This environmental message supports the therapeutic work of reframing negative self talk.
A child surrounded by a space that clearly demonstrates their worth finds it much harder to believe harmful thoughts about themselves.
Practical Steps for Supporting Child Abuse Prevention
Based on my conversation with Susie and my own journey of healing from childhood trauma, here are concrete ways you can support child abuse prevention and children’s healing:
Support organizations like Room Redux. Whether through financial donations, volunteering your time, or donating furniture and supplies, you can directly impact a child’s healing environment. Room Redux has chapters in Texas, Georgia, Denver, Ohio, New Hampshire, California, and Nevada, with more forming. Even a recurring donation of $5 a month makes a difference.
Learn the statistics and share them. Child Abuse Prevention Month provides an opportunity to educate your community. One in four girls and one in six boys will experience sexual abuse before age 18. When people understand how prevalent this is, they’re more likely to take action.
Practice trauma informed care in your own sphere. Whether you’re a parent, teacher, coach, or simply have children in your life, you can incorporate trauma informed care for children principles. Create safe spaces, believe children when they disclose, pay attention to behavioral changes that might indicate abuse.
Shop the Amazon registries. Room Redux chapters create Amazon registries for each room transformation. You can purchase specific items like lamps or bedspreads and know exactly which child’s room your contribution is supporting. A direct, tangible way to participate in healing the inner child of a trauma survivor.
Support your own healing journey. For those of us healing from childhood trauma, remember that addressing your physical environment is a legitimate part of inner child healing work. Whether through EMDR for childhood trauma, redecorating your bedroom, or creating a meditation space, environmental healing is valid and important.
The Human Spirit and Compassionate Action
One aspect of Susie’s story that deeply moved me is that her work comes from witnessing the impact of trauma on children and families rather than from personal experience. She saw a need and felt compelled to respond with compassion and action.
This demonstrates something beautiful about the human spirit: caring deeply about preventing suffering and supporting those who have experienced it, regardless of personal history.
Susie can see children as children, can see my five-year-old self even without knowing my full story, and can feel genuine compassion that drives her to create real solutions.
For those of us who are survivors engaged in healing from childhood trauma and inner child healing, knowing there are people like Susie in the world, people who care, who take action, who create resources without expecting anything in return, that itself is healing.
Creating What You Wish Existed
Susie keeps a sign in her office that reads: “Create the thing you wish existed.” That’s exactly what she did. She saw a gap in services for traumatized children. They were getting counseling, but going home to triggering environments. She created an organization to fill that gap.
This is the spirit of Child Abuse Prevention Month at its best: mobilizing communities to take concrete action beyond raising awareness.
Whether that action looks like volunteering with Room Redux, supporting other child abuse prevention organizations, mentoring at-risk youth, or simply learning the signs of abuse so you can intervene when needed, every action matters.
During Child Abuse Prevention Month and beyond, we all have opportunities to create what we wish existed. Maybe that’s starting a local chapter of an organization like Room Redux. Maybe showing up consistently for one child who needs a safe adult in their life. Maybe supporting your own inner child healing journey so you can become the protective adult you needed when you were young.
The Connection Between Prevention and Healing
Child Abuse Prevention Month reminds us that prevention and healing are interconnected. When we support children’s healing from childhood trauma through organizations like Room Redux, we’re also preventing future trauma. Children who receive support and heal are less likely to develop unhealthy coping mechanisms, more likely to establish healthy relationships, and better equipped to protect their own future children.
Similarly, those of us engaged in healing the inner child as adults often become the most passionate advocates for child abuse prevention and child sexual abuse prevention.
Our healing journeys give us insight into what children need, what warning signs look like, and why intervention matters so urgently.
The Hope in Transformation
What gives me profound hope is meeting people like Susie Vybrial who embody compassionate action. She saw a problem, created a solution, and built an organization that is literally transforming lives one room at a time. She’s demonstrating that healing from childhood trauma can begin immediately after disclosure, supported by environments that tell children they’re safe, loved, and worthy.
The rooms Room Redux creates become daily reminders that healing is possible, that people care, that beauty and safety can replace trauma and fear. For a child who’s been abused, walking into a transformed space might be the first tangible proof they’ve received that their life can be different now. That healing from childhood trauma is a reality that starts right now, in this room, in this moment.
That’s the power of combining child abuse prevention awareness with concrete action. That’s what trauma informed design and trauma informed care for children look like in practice. That’s how we honor Child Abuse Prevention Month in ways that create lasting change.
The Ripple of One Transformed Room
Every room Room Redux transforms creates ripples that extend far beyond those four walls. A child who feels safe enough to sleep in their bed gets better rest, does better in school, has more energy for friendships and healing work. These children grow into adults who’ve experienced what healing from childhood trauma looks like. They become parents who understand the importance of safe environments. They become advocates who support other survivors. They become the next generation of people creating what they wish existed.
This is how we actually create lasting change around child abuse prevention and trauma healing through sustained, compassionate action that transforms individual lives and, through those transformed lives, entire communities.
Susie Vybrial and Room Redux demonstrate what’s possible when we move from awareness to action, from compassion to results, from wishing things were different to actually creating the difference we wish to see.
They’re transforming spaces and transforming lives, one child and one room at a time.
And we can all be part of that transformation.
Ready to support Room Redux and child abuse prevention? Visit roomredux.org to learn about volunteering, donating, or starting a chapter in your area. Follow them on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and other social platforms to see room transformations and learn about upcoming needs. Shop their Amazon registries to directly contribute items for specific room transformations. And for more resources on healing from childhood trauma, inner child healing, and supporting survivors, visit my community at EmpoweredSurvivors.com.