I’ve had this idea for a while now…

In fact, just yesterday while hemming and hawing about starting this blog for the thousandth time, I randomly came across an abandoned 2016 note on my iPhone titled Blog Ideas. I shook my head in disbelief when I realized the brainstormed ideas from five years ago neatly overlapped with the posts I was currently working on. It was an annoying affirmation that I was on the right path, and also that it was probably taking too long.  

My work as a clinical psychologist has brought indescribable meaning to my life. I’ve worked with hundreds of trauma survivors who have endured atrocities from the moral injury of combat to the humiliation of sexual abuse and assault. I love sitting with others, holding space and catalyzing change. On the great days, I feel like I was part of significant change. On the bad days, I feel emotionally depleted. On the usual days, I feel fulfilled.

And yet, I feel this void. A yearning. This thing that gnaws at me when I’m not tending to it.

Like I’m not fully doing the thing I’m meant to do.

Mostly, I’d describe it as a longing for the creative. A longing to write.

Writing has always been that thing. You know, that thing? That thing that tugs at you and refuses to be ignored? That soul-stirring passion, keep you up at night with childlike excitement kinda thing? As much as I’ve tried to push it out of my mind, it always comes back around again.

Well to be clear, the thing I’ve been resisting is the sharing of the writing, not so much the writing itself. Because that I’ve been doing all along, constantly penning down thoughts, words begging to escape onto a blank page. It’s physically agitating sometimes, ideas calling me up at night, pulling me from bed, or distracting me from even the most engaging of entertainment during the day.

When I think about ageing, it’s the thing I worry about most. That I’ll have a deep and painful sense of regret for not having followed my true calling. For writing all the words, but never sending them out. Never opening myself. 

At eight, I wanted to be a writer. At 22, I wanted to be a writer. At 37, I still do.

And I guess I’ve been saying “one day” long enough.

“The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave it neither power nor time.”

Mary Oliver

I suppose this yearning is really also a desire to be fully integrated, to share my full self. To match my outsides with my insides. To not hide behind a doctor’s title or anything else for that matter.

My parents’ tumultuous divorce was finalized by the time I was three, and I grew up going back and forth between an alcoholic and a sexually abusive home. Rinse and repeat. There was no safe haven, just a shred of relief to exchange one for the other for a day or two.

One of my main coping strategies was to be extremely boundaried. To section myself off. Except for a few years in high school, I was a good student. Diligent. I showed up to my private school with my work done, hair brushed, and a tight lid on what was going on at home. I needed the outside to look perfect—to be viewed perfectly— in order to tolerate the chaos I was experiencing. And it kind of worked—white skin, money, outwardly successful parents—those things can hide a lot behind closed doors.

In some ways, this mentality has stuck. I’ve erred in being too professional, too motivated by perfectionism, as opposed to being my natural self, which I’ve learned is meant to be warm and open and creative. I’ve pointed to my profession as a reason I needed to stay tight lipped about myself and my story, a reason why I can’t write openly.

I value my clinical work enormously, and I haven’t wanted to jeopardize that by oversharing on the internet or in the book manuscript I recently finished. Constantly, I’ve pondered the questions- What does it mean to be truly seen? What does it mean professionally? Personally? What are the consequences that I can’t yet foresee? The spinning of these thoughts has kept me from taking the first step.    

But I also know I have so much to share. And doing so without my own story feels lacking. Hollow. Like the core of what this work really means to me is missing. I’ve learned a lot along the way, from my studies, and my clients, but mostly from my own experience. I don’t mean that in a self-congratulatory kind of way, but in the kind of way you learn something when your life depends on it. Learning becomes a passion when it’s your path to some shred of relief.

I read once that all research is really “me-search.” If that’s true, why don’t we talk more openly within our field? Why is it okay to discuss how high blood pressure runs in your family, but it’s still not okay to say that alcoholism does? Or sexual abuse? Let me tell you, I believe boundaries are the foundation of a happy life, which is in part why it has taken me so long to execute on this blog. But can’t we be both boundaried and open?

Frankly, I can’t know exactly how writing this blog or publishing a book may impact my life down the line. But I do know, today, that I’m sick of hiding.

The hardest part about putting yourself out there, I think, is that once you’re out, you can’t come back in. You risk an inevitable vulnerability shameover that comes from being publicly emotionally raw. From the girl who was too shy to raise her hand in class, it’s quite the departure from my safe place. Isn’t it better to stay nestled in a little cocoon and be guaranteed safety? Protection? For a long time, I thought so. And for a long time, it was the right decision for me. But after a while, it gets quite painful to not extend your wings and transform. 

The goal of healing from trauma is integration. Meaning, breaking down the barriers between different parts of yourself. To live as one, whole person. To not be cut off from your own experiences. To allow all parts of yourself to be seen, valued, and connected. To be true, to be genuine, to not be fractured.

For so long, I was disjointed, unable to consciously acknowledge certain core truths because of how painful they were. In my healing, I came to first acknowledge and then accept my trauma history, a long arduous process of combing through and combating all the ways denial had snaked and slithered through my life.

Without acceptance, there is no healing. But to accept an atrocity from someone who is supposed to love you is a mind bending, heart breaking, world shattering type of thing. The denial was thick and sneaky. It helped me take the pain in smaller waves. It helped me survive.

Acceptance took until I was 33.  

Once I achieved this true acceptance, one I was finally unable to turn away from, it was harder and harder to stay disjointed. It became utterly painful to live the way I had been living before. Impossible, really. What I somehow tolerated in the past, I could no longer. I was unable to be around my abuser without serious consequences to my mental health. Once I could fully and clearly see what had happened, I was physically unable to act like things were fine to other members of my family. Constantly, I felt like a liar.

I was left with two choices—shrink off into the night and disappear, never to be seen again, or tell those close to me and risk losing it all. But seriously, the former seemed the more appealing for quite some time, and I fully considered how I might disconnect from my family. But it also didn’t feel right, and so I took the biggest leap of my life and spoke up.

There were significant consequences to this disclosure. There was great loss. My family quite literally severed in two. Funny how the truth can do that just by speaking it. It was a time of shedding an old skin, of burning down the life that I knew to nothing so I could rebuild it into something I couldn’t yet see.    

“Barn’s burnt down––Now I can see the moon.”

Mizuta Masahide

But alongside the tremendous grief, my life became more and more integrated. I felt more clear, more genuine, more me. I felt honest. And the most unexpected thing happened. I found love and connection that I had never imagined was possible for me. All those years spent hiding myself meant that others were also unable to access me. Now that I was connected to myself, it allowed others to truly be with me for the first time.

Feeling this newfound love made it a little easier when others walked out of my life for good. I had believed that the traumatized part of me was too shameful to share, that people would reject me if they knew the truth about me. But I don’t believe that anymore.

So here I am, stepping forward with my full self, with my academic brain and my traumatized past, full of fear and excitement, to offer the small bits of wisdom I have with the world.  To step forward into a new space of integration—with my personal, professional, psychologist, and creative selves, all blended up into one.

Here, you will find my contemplations on trauma and growth—an assortment of educational essays, personal stories, random observations of our collective traumas, and sometimes, just love notes to my dog. I hope this can be a place to learn and understand more about trauma and the slippery process of healing. I hope it can be a place that provides inspiration and light and truth.

As someone who has studied, treated, and lived personally with post-traumatic stress, I know the utter isolation all too well. I also know that above anything else, art heals. It connects us. I hope these posts may provide that for you. That maybe if I reach out my hand, you will be able to feel it, and maybe even reach back.

Everything is a door. Trauma can close it, but it can open it too.