VOLUME 11    NUMBER 2    2024    30-31         RITUAL     Catherine St-Cyr  Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences, McGill University, Montreal,  Quebec, Canada  trustwomen@gmail.com     KEYWORDS: Trauma-informed care  F  irst we prepare the terrain. Do you find speculum exams difficult? We can premedicate. Sometimes that helps.  You have the power here. Say pause, or stop I will immediately obey. Immediately. I will say what I  m doing before I do it. I will sit you up so you can be above me, looking down I will check in with you verbally, and visually. Hand you the speculum to demystify. Here, move it around. Quack, quack. Every word carefully chosen. Let your knees fall to the side. (Never anything you  ve heard in trauma. Never say open your legs, I tell the residents) And if you tell me to stop, it  s not a failure. It  s a victory. You said no And it was respected. It  s a triumph. Be proud.      © 2024 Catherine St-Cyr. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License   CC BY.    International Journal of Whole Person Care  Vol 11, No 2 (2024)      Ritual Catherine St-Cyr    Biographical note  Before medicine, the author was a counsellor and intervention worker. She retains a keen interest in the social sciences and is forever curious about the human condition.  International Journal of Whole Person Care  Vol 11 No 2 (2024)     31