The Truth No One Tells You at the Beginning In my most recent Healing Out Loud episode, I talk about something no one warns you about: healing hurts before it heals. Most people picture recovery as a peaceful climb into some serene place. But the truth? It feels more like tearing up the old floorboards […]
Writing for Myself: Lessons from Year One
Hitting the Wall When I started this website, I was honestly at a point where I’d hit a wall. My personal life was a total shit show, to put it bluntly, and everything inside me was bubbling up with nowhere to go. I’d been journaling, but it was just messy thoughts scattered across a notepad. […]
Getting to Know My IFS Parts
IFS stands for Internal Family Systems, and no, it’s not about your in-laws or your Wi-Fi setup. It’s a therapy model based on a pretty wild but surprisingly comforting idea: we’re not just one “self.” We’re a whole system of selves, or “parts,” each with its own voice, its own job, and its own emotional baggage. […]
Living With CPTSD: Why Depth Matters to Me
There’s something that keeps circling back in my life like a boomerang made of emotional clarity, and it hits me a little harder every year: I can’t do surface-level shit. Of any kind. I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve smiled through small talk, nodded in the right places, and played the part like a […]
Do We Have To Forgive To Heal From Trauma?
It’s important that this gets said: If you’re healing from CPTSD and you’re not ready to forgive the people who hurt you? There is nothing wrong with that. You’re just being honest with yourself. And it’s actually a brave thing to be. Forgiveness is one of those overused words people throw around when they don’t […]
When CPTSD and Discernment Become Tangled
For most of my life, I didn’t trust myself. Honestly, not really. I could read a room in seconds, crack a joke under pressure, or keep things calm while everything burned down behind my eyes, but ask me what I needed. Or whether someone’s behavior felt safe? I had no idea. I’d either panic and […]