The Quiet Beauty of Letting Go
I put the garden up every September, and every year there is a strange minute in the middle of it. I stand there with the tomato cages in my arms,…
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Boundaries Without Guilt: Why a Screen Door Is Still a Door
I had a client tell me once that she felt like a hallway. Everybody walked through her to get somewhere else. However, nobody stopped to see what was on the…
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You Are More Than What You Survived
A woman sat in my office a while back at the good end of hard work. Years of it. She had stopped bracing when doors shut. This woman could say…
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What Healing Actually Looks Like Over Time
A client of mine, years into good, brave work, hit a hard anniversary and spent a weekend flat on the mat. Old symptoms, old thoughts, the works. She came in…
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Co-Regulation: Healing Happens Around Safe People
Watch a mama with a crying baby and you will see the oldest medicine on earth. She does not explain to the baby that the situation is manageable. She picks…
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Fawn Mode: When You Lose Yourself to Keep the Peace
I asked her what she wanted, and I meant it as a small question. What do you want to see change in your marriage, your week, your life? She laughed…
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Flight Mode: When You Can’t Slow Down
She showed me her calendar like it was evidence, and honestly, it was. Three months, not one white square. Work, church committee, kids’ ball, the extra project she volunteered for,…
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Generational Trauma: What Gets Passed Down Quietly
Every family hands down a recipe box. Some of the cards are pure treasure. The cornbread dressing, the way your people tell stories on the porch, the hymns everybody knows…
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Sexual Trauma and the Long Road Back to Feeling Safe
I am going to write this one carefully. I will tell you up front what I tell clients: nothing here will be graphic. Some of you need this post. Then…
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Emotional Abuse and Domestic Violence: The Wounds Nobody Can See
“He never hit me. So why do I feel like this?” She asked me that with her hands twisted in her lap, apologizing for taking up an appointment somebody with…
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Betrayal Trauma: When the Wound Came From Somebody You Loved
A wreck never claimed to love you. The tornado did not sit across the supper table for eleven years. Whatever else those storms take, they do not take your history…
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Childhood Trauma and the Wounds Nobody Saw
“But they fed me. I always had a roof over my head.” Grown adults say that to me all the time, usually while trying to talk themselves out of the…
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Big T Trauma, Little t Trauma, and Why Comparing Keeps You Stuck
“Other people had it worse.” If I had a dollar for every time somebody said that on my couch, I could pave my driveway with the dollars. It usually comes…
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Forgiveness That Protects You
We’ve reached the last stretch of this series, and I want to open it with a picture from every Southern porch I’ve ever loved. The screen door. A screen door…
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Learning to Speak Kindly to Yourself Again
Try something for me. For one day, just listen to how you talk to yourself. Write down the actual sentences. “Stupid.” “You always do this.” “No wonder.” Then look at…
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Shame Is Not the Same as Responsibility
There’s a sorting job that has to happen in this stage of healing, and most of us were never taught how to do it. Somewhere in the pile of everything…
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Releasing the Version of You Who Didn’t Know Then
There’s a woman you keep going back to visit, and every visit is the same. It’s the you from before, the one who said yes, who stayed, who believed him,…
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When You Ignored Red Flags to Survive
The cruelest part of hindsight is how loud the signs get after the fact. Now that you know, you can’t unsee them, and the question starts circling: the flags were…
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Forgiving Yourself for Trusting
Somewhere along the way, you started treating your trust like it was the crime. Like the open heart was the mistake, and the deceit was just what open hearts have…
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The Hidden Self-Blame After Betrayal
We’ve spent eighteen posts on the betrayal and the person who did it. Now we turn to a courtroom nobody else can see, the one running inside you, where court’s…