When the Past Keeps Chiming: Boundaries With Someone Who Lives Outside of Time
Each year during the Thanksgiving season, I open my storage unit to retrieve my Christmas ornaments. Next to the boxes sits an antique grandfather wall clock that once belonged to my former mother-in-law’s family. It still chimes on the hour, but it no longer keeps...
Breaking Free From Trauma: Three Simple Rules of Starting Again
Do you believe that we are put on this earth for a reason? You don’t have to be “spiritual” to believe. I believed in something more when I was growing up. It was my way of surviving my childhood as a sex offender’s daughter. I realized my dream and broke...
How Writing Helped a Survivor Heal – and Find Joy!
Give yourself the pleasure of a functional life filled with people who believe you, who trust you, love you, and who accept the beauty and the wonder that is your strength. I recently connected with Alle C. Hall, a sought-after author, speaker, writing instructor, and...
What is the Point?
WHAT IS THE POINT?By Jesse Donahue © 2023 Love, the theme of many songs and found in the words of poets, theologians, and philosophers alike, is too often hidden from man by his experienced and internalized traumas Consciousness is the ‘point’ of the Universe. Without...
The Knock on the Door that Changed My World: Domestic Violence can Happen to Anyone
It was late, and my kids had gone to bed a few hours before. I was tired and getting ready to call it a night. A sudden knock on the door made me look up from my keyboard. It was a gentle knock, almost as if it had not even happened. “Did you hear a knock?” I asked my...
Cassandra’s Legacy: A Brief History of Gaslighting
Cassandra, the Prophetess of Troy, whose name in Greek means “she who entangles men,” rejected the sexual advances of the god Apollo in his temple. As punishment, Apollo invalidated Cassandra’s gift of prophecy: henceforth, no one would believe her, even when her...
Meeting the Bear: What Nervous-System Healing Looks Like in Real Time
I am a mountain climber at heart, and I live in California, home to the Sierra Nevadas. I’ve spent much of my life moving through the backcountry with a pack on my shoulders. Over time, I learned to bring only what truly matters for survival. The lack of comforts...
My Skin Knows I’m a Survivor
One sweltering July when I was fifteen, I was camped out on a shaded picnic bench at nerd camp. While furiously pushing the buttons on my calculator and drilling exercises for my upcoming exam, I heard rustling in the grass ahead of me. When I looked up, I saw a small...