I have a bench overlooking the Hudson River, just a stone’s throw from my apartment in New York City. It’s nothing particularly special, just a bench beside the water. But over the years, it’s become somewhere I go when life feels a little too much. Sometimes I sit there for ten minutes, other times an […]
How to Forgive Yourself After Childhood Trauma
Sometimes the hardest person to forgive after childhood trauma isn’t the person who hurt you. It’s yourself. That sounds strange when you were a child and someone else was responsible for what happened to you. You might reasonably think there should be nothing to forgive. And yet, here we are. You might look back at […]
BPD vs CPTSD: Why the Difference Matters
I recently found myself in a debate about something that comes up more and more often in conversations about trauma: whether Borderline Personality Disorder is actually Complex PTSD. The conversation started with a pretty unequivocal statement: “Borderline Personality Disorder IS C-PTSD.” That didn’t leave much room for nuance. I understand why that idea resonates with […]
Regret, Healing, and the Things We Can’t Change
We All Have Regrets We all have regrets. We’re only human. We make mistakes, we say things we wish we hadn’t, and we make choices that, in hindsight, we might have made differently. And then there are those embarrassing moments we would happily erase from existence if we could. But something I’ve come to learn […]
CPTSD: Every Healing Journey Is Different
Vulnerability Doesn’t End When You Hit Publish One of the things I didn’t expect when I started writing about CPTSD was that hitting “publish” would bring a whole new kind of vulnerability. Writing my story was difficult, but sharing it with the world was something else entirely. Suddenly, the words I had carried privately for […]
Limerence vs. Love After Childhood Trauma
Why Intensity Can Feel Like Connection For many people who grew up with childhood trauma, love can feel confusing. Not because we don’t know how to love. Many trauma survivors actually love deeply. We tend to notice the smallest changes in someone’s mood, remember the details other people miss, and become incredibly aware of the […]