Tag: childhood trauma


  • I Went to Church Twice on Easter Sunday, and Unexpectedly Found God.

    Six or seven years ago, three Bellingham Police Department units pulled into a parking lot behind my Jeep and I didn’t even notice them following me. They didn’t take me to jail. They took me to One Central. That psychiatric hospitalization was a single link in a chain of events that stretches back to the…

    Read More


  • The Note in the Empty Bedroom

    3.5 years. Two hospitalizations. One note that said “Get help” on an empty bedroom door. This is the story of my estrangement from my daughters, what I had to burn down to become someone worth coming back to, and how I found my way back to them. This is not a highlight reel. This is…

    Read More


  • I Beat the Shit Out of Things Today

    Today wasn’t about fixing anything — it was about feeling everything. I went offline and spent five hours in a grief lodge, moving anger, loss, and decades of trapped emotion through my body. What started as calm chanting turned into a powerful, collective release that cracked me wide open. I screamed, cried, and finally let…

    Read More


  • Goodbye 2025, Hello 2026

    2025 wasn’t just another year. It was the year I took my life back. I broke patterns that had been running me since childhood, stopped performing, and learned how to trust myself again. This wasn’t survival; it was reclamation. I found real freedom in boundaries, honesty, and showing up as my full self without apology.…

    Read More


  • Acceptance. And Uncertainty.

    Today, I hit a trailhead I couldn’t ignore: my fear of uncertainty. In IFS, it showed up as a very young part—quiet, tense, always bracing—using denial as protection. I’ve spent years fighting diagnoses, circumstances, and history, thinking resistance was strength. It isn’t. Acceptance doesn’t mean approval or giving up; it means stopping the exhausting war…

    Read More