Writing Trauma

A practical and inspiring guide to transformational personal storytelling, The Story You Need to Tell is the product of Sandra Marinella’s pioneering work with veterans and cancer patients, her years of teaching writing, and her research into its profound healing properties. Riveting true stories illustrate Marinella’s methods for understanding, telling, and editing personal stories in ways that foster resilience and renewal. She also shares her own experience of using journaling and expressive writing to navigate challenges including breast cancer and postpartum depression.

In "Beyond Survivor" Frayne offers his own history, hoping to help other victims of abuse find the courage and strength to seek help to triumph over it, and to increase awareness and education among the general public. Author Patricia A. McKnight, in her review of the book, says, “This expertly written book shows the path of standing strong and achieving what all mankind desires; retrieving the happiness once destroyed by the wicked. This collection of outstanding poetry and prose is a must read for all as inspiration to prevail against the challenges put forth in the battle to obtain our...

Dark Psychology for Fiction Writers shows writers how to build dark characters without flattening them, write victims with agency, use objects, silence, language, memory, and pressure to deepen plot, and keep moral complexity clear. Across the chapters, an original story is gradually seeded and developed: The House That Whispered, a tale of a daughter returning home after her father’s funeral, a closed parlor, a mother’s careful version of the past, and a house full of objects waiting to be understood. By the end of the book, those seeds gather into a completed short story, showing how ...

Drawing on the mind-body techniques of somatic therapy, The Healing Sexual Trauma Guided Journal offers insightful writing prompts to help you explore your emotions, overcome internalized shame, and heal your traumatized nervous system.

A neuroscientist explores how trauma impacts the brain, especially for women—and how we can learn to heal ourselves Everyone experiences trauma. Whether a specific harrowing event or a series of stressful moments that culminate over time, trauma can echo and etch itself into our brain as we...

This “witty, humorous, and heartfelt“ (Cinelle Barnes) memoir navigates the tangled branches of Annabelle Tometich’s life, from growing up in Florida as the child of and a Filipino mother and a deceased white father to her adult life as a med-school-reject-turned-food-critic. When...

Walking with Wodan is the unflinching autobiographical testament of Freya Aswynn, one of the most influential and controversial figures in modern Northern Tradition and runic spirituality. Part life-history, part initiatory record, this book traces a journey forged through extreme adversity, institutional neglect, occult awakening, and lifelong devotion to Wodan/Odin as living spiritual force. From a brutal childhood in post-war Europe and years spent in state care, through early encounters with magic, witchcraft, and esoteric orders, to her central role in the revival of Germanic paganism ...

Unlock the Power Within: Transform Your Life and Reclaim Your Voice with Coercive Relationships: Find the Answers You Seek. You didn't lose yourself all at once. It happened slowly, quietly, until the person you used to be felt like a stranger. This compassionate, clinically grounded guide gives survivors of coercive control the tools to understand what happened, reclaim their identity, and begin real healing. Jennifer C. Parker, a seasoned social worker and therapist, walks you through the patterns of emotional abuse, the trauma symptoms behind your confusion, and the proven path forward. ...

One in six women is the victim of sexual assault. Using her own hard-won wisdom, author Jen Cross shows how to heal through journaling and personal writing. Writing Ourselves Whole is a collection of essays and creative writing encouragements for sexual trauma survivors who want to risk writing a different story. Each short chapter offers encouragement, experience, and exercises.

“In the fairy tales about father–daughter incest—‘The Girl Without Hands,’ ‘Thousand Furs,’ the original ‘Cinderella,’ ‘Donkey Skin,’ and the stories of Saint Dymphna, patron saint of incest survivors—the daughters are all as you would expect them to be: horrified by...

Some secrets are too dangerous to tell and too dark to keep... When young Corianne Dempsey and her best friend, Rebecca, are approached by a stranger on their way to school, only one girl makes it home. When Rebecca turns up dead, Corianne's childhood ends abruptly. Growing up in the long shadow of this event, Corianne is now a conflicted young woman seeking solace in dangerous places. Her hauntingly-dark dreams begin crossing into waking life, hinting that the past she remembers may be a lie. Driven to make sense of what is happening, she returns to the only place she feels solid, the farm...

Poetry is not a puzzle for experts. It is a human skill. If you can breathe, you already have the first instrument. Poems That Breathe is a practical field guide for readers and writers who want poems that feel alive on the tongue and honest on the page. It treats poetry as presence, not performance. You will learn how breath shapes line breaks, how silence gives meaning, and how to build poems that stay clear without becoming flat. This book trains you to write with grounded images, clean sound, and purpose that holds up even when no one is watching. It also helps you avoid the common ...

He returned from the Great War a decorated hero, but inside, twenty-year-old Ernest Hemingway was bleeding to death. The mortar shell that shattered his leg in Italy left invisible shrapnel in his mind, and the polite, suffocating parlors of his hometown offer no defense against the screaming night terrors. Desperate to outrun the ghosts of the trenches, Ernest flees north with two friends into the remote, unforgiving wilderness of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. But the sanctuary he seeks has been incinerated by wildfire—a blackened, apocalyptic wasteland that perfectly mirrors the ruin ...

A delightful compendium of musings from the master of life writing, the much-loved Blake Morrison, for those who practise the art of memoir, and those who read it. 'Hallelujah! — now is the perfect time for Morrison’s book On Memoir' THE TIMES 'Lessons in life writing from a master' THE...

Written in the form of a letter to his ailing father, this debut memoir from the bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook explores the complicated burden of caring for an abusive parent who is dying—here is Matthew Quick’s most personal and potent work to date. On the surface...

Embark on a transformative journey with Niobis Queiro's upcoming book, Joy Notes: Balancing the Trauma with Triumph. This captivating masterpiece, penned by the celebrated motivational speaker, unveils Nio's remarkable life story, enriched with poignant insights drawn from her Near Death Experience. The book is a harmonious blend of personal anecdotes and interviews with accomplished women who have triumphed over health traumas.

Words Heal uses self-guided imagery, expressive writing therapy, and journaling to work with those recovering from or living with a range of tough personal challenges, or who struggle with discouraging health issues, chronic illness, traumas, distress, poor quality of life, negativity and adverse situations, and would like to have a better attitude, a better quality of life, a more joyful life, and develop a positive attitude all in the privacy of their own space at their own pace.

Trauma and its effects can feel like a never-ending storm, and there's no safe harbor in sight from the thoughts and emotions that toss and turn so violently and unpredictably in your head. But healing is possible. Your brain can actually rewire these thoughts and emotions. And you can direct that powerful healing process through journaling.

Most people can remember what happened to them. Few can explain what those events formed inside them. The Shape of a Life is a bridge and field guide for anyone who wants to write their life story with truth, care, and meaning. It is for the reader who is tired of performance. It is for the person who has lived through hard seasons, carries scattered memories, and wants to turn those pieces into a readable pattern. This book does not ask you to expose everything. It teaches you the difference between private truth, family truth, and public truth, so you can tell the truth without harming ...

Valentine Monroe's riveting reflection begins in the 1940s in New York. She and her mother flee to Texas after Valentine is severely injured by her babysitter's boyfriend. Traumatized and vulnerable, she is inspired by stalwart Aunt Nona's love and guidance. Believing that trouble is in the past, she is blindsided by devastating loss and a subsequent abduction attempt. Feeling powerless over her future as a helpless target for evil, she is haunted and weighed down by her past. Once she refuses to be a pathetic, joyless victim, she sets on a path of healing and renewal determined to break ...