Doris Lessing wrote...

'The writers I know, or whose lives I have read about, have one thing in common: a stressed childhood. I don't mean, necessarily, an unhappy one, but children who have been forced into self-awareness early, have had to learn how to watch the grown-ups, assess them, know what they really mean, as distinct from what they say, children who are continually observing everyone - they have had the best of apprenticeships.'

Absolutely true, mouse_.

If you can tap into the many emotions that are attached to the trauma/traumas, you can weave them into any story.

Emotions fuel the words, the words spark the story and the reader becomes engulfed in the flames.

As the saying goes--write what you know.