The Anniversary of Birth Trauma: A Metaphor Analysis

The aim of this qualitative secondary data analysis was to identify the metaphors women used to describe their anniversary of their traumatic births. The existing data set that was reanalyzed was from a phenomenological study of the anniversary of birth trauma. Metaphor identification procedure was the method used to identify 8 different metaphors from the women's descriptions that provided a rich source of insight into their yearly struggles. These metaphors characterized the anniversary of traumatic birth as a great pretender, a lottery, a trigger, a clock watcher, a giant rubber band, a guilt trip, a sea of sadness, and bottled up anger.