by Cassie Sands | Jul 2, 2021 | Complex PTSD Healing, CPTSD Poetry, Guest Contributor
A survivor poem… And through all of this messiness and brokenness and trauma I begin to piece together a more cohesive story of me I discover forgotten, wounded parts of myself Sealed into catacombs of silence and submission long ago Demanding to be heard I find...
by Cassie Sands | Mar 11, 2021 | Complex PTSD Healing, CPTSD, CPTSD Survivor Stories, Family Estrangement, Grief, Guest Contributor
I started writing as a way to process and talk about exceedingly difficult things I knew I needed to discuss in therapy but was unable to even begin to make sense of myself. For such a long time, I wasn’t able in any way to discuss much more than I had been...
by Cassie Sands | Feb 24, 2021 | Complex PTSD Healing, CPTSD, CPTSD Survivor Stories, Family Estrangement, Guest Contributor, LGBTQ and Complex Trauma Healing
Like many others in the LGBTQ community, coming out was a painful and difficult experience. For someone like myself, who comes from an abusive family of origin as well as a strict religious community, this process was especially complicated. After I came out to my mom...
by Cassie Sands | Feb 3, 2021 | Complex PTSD Healing, CPTSD, CPTSD and Narcissistic Abuse, CPTSD Survivor Stories, Family Estrangement, Guest Contributor
When I was fifteen, my mom got me my first cell phone – a black Nokia flip phone. Texts were character limited and cost 25 cents both to send and to receive. I still have it, along with its charger, in a box in my second bedroom, nestled among other...
by Cassie Sands | Jan 21, 2021 | Complex PTSD Healing, CPTSD, CPTSD and Inner Child Work, CPTSD and Narcissistic Abuse, CPTSD Survivor Stories, Guest Contributor
I distinctly remember the first time I met my inner child. It was the fall of 2019, and I had just started grappling with the realization that the things I went through with my parents did and do, in fact, affect me deeply. Perhaps this is obvious and easy to you,...
