Dispatches from the front lines of trauma healing.
I’ve been writing about trauma healing, PTSD, CPTSD, and wellbeing for almost 15 years, exploring what it means to be a high-performer making impact in the world — without sacrificing health or happiness.
Not Alone in the Dark
It was many decades into my trauma healing journey that I gave up my fear in the dark — the flashbacks of childhood terror that awakening in the middle of the night would inevitably summon.
The Mask of High-Performance
It’s a trap to focus on high performance as a way to gain love, safety, and belonging. There's always another task to excel at or a new level of high-performance to attain.
The Inner Child Does Not Go on Vacation
Despite the inner work we've done, parts of us still surface in despair, dejected precisely because they continue to be met with our disdain and indifference.
Revenge of the Inner Child
Younger parts of us carry wounds from the past, until we work with them to heal. When traumatic events happen, early in life, the most innocent and creative parts of us are the most wounded.
A Love Letter to Dissociation
When all else fails, dissociation can be trusted to reliably step in and take us out of awareness. It's the rescue party who pulls up to the situation in a fast car and screams, "Get in! I'm getting out of here," when no one else is coming.
The Mother Inside
In the same way that we have younger parts, we can also have parts that want to protect and care for us in our inner world. They can be any type of caregiver, but I find that most of us have an inner mother and an inner father that we relate to inside.