Corby author raises awareness of childhood abuse and mental health through collection of poetry

A Corby trauma and mental health writer, poet and author has released her first poetry book aimed at raising awareness of childhood abuse.

Debra Reay, a survivor of childhood abuse, has shared a collection of poetry that she has carefully compiled over the course of the past three years, telling her story and reaching out to help other survivors of abuse and to help them believe they are worthy.

Her book, Through the Eyes of a Trauma Child, was published last month.

Through her words, Debra wants to raise awareness of childhood abuse and mental health.

Her writing journey began during Covid when she decided to have a go at writing a poem.

To Debra’s surprise, the poem was repeatedly published and in 2022 was an award-winning poem and she holds the title of Elite Writer Status 2022 through the Beckindale Poetry Journal and The Poets Yearbook.

Debra said: “It was kind of an escape, I’d just attempted to write one poem, I don’t know what made me do it.

“It was a competition online and it just kept getting re-published in the same journal and it kind of went from there. I continued to write and set up a social media for my writing and it just grew to the book.

“Everything that I wrote was all trauma related. So it was literally everything that happened to me as a child and growing up.

“It’s about raising awareness of childhood abuse and basically letting people know that there are others like them, they’re not on their own.”

Debra has also made mental health care packs for some local people, particularly children, and she is extending this to make packs for Corby Mind.

She is currently working on her second and third books, both mental health and seasonal mental health.

The first of which she intends to release on September 10 for World Suicide Prevention Day and the other is aimed to be released in November.

To find out more information about Debra, visit her author page on Facebook and if you’d like to purchase her book, visit her Amazon page.