For me, that meant codependency, shame, childhood trauma, and eventually inner-child and shadow work. I talk about the shame I carried after learning as a child that my mother had died by suicide, the way old wounds can show up years later as oversized reactions, and the idea that “if it’s hysterical, it’s historical.”

We also get into the difference between taking responsibility for the harm I caused and taking responsibility for everything that happened to me, the danger of toxic positivity, and why recovery is not always quick or clean. I also talk about creativity—especially drumming and writing—as part of how I make sense of the past and imagine something better for the future.

Mostly, this is a conversation about what happens when the obvious crisis is over and the deeper healing begins.

I’m grateful to Michel for giving this conversation room to wander past the obvious recovery story and into the messier stuff underneath it.

Sobertown is built around exactly that kind of honest examination. Michel has created a space where people can talk about recovery without pretending it is neat, linear, or finished.

Please listen to our conversation, and spend some time checking out the other amazing conversations on Sobertown as well.

✦ Author Bio

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Memoir That Lights the Path to Your Own Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

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The book that had to be written, despite all my reservations about climbing back down into the chaos, the vulnerability, and the pain.

Wounded Angels is a guidemap through the terrain of exhaustion and despair—and one man’s way out of it. A way that just might be yours, too.

👉 Get Wounded Angels

Author bio: David Deane Haskell is a writer of fiction and non-fiction who’s given up on trying to pick a lane. From new age futuristic flights into high-tech worlds and their effect on the psyche, to terrifying depths of real-life trauma and despair, David’s novels resonate somewhere between fact and fantasy, but always with a core of relatable truth.

David weaves personal reflections into his stories, creating a reading experience that blends what’s relatably human with deeply personal truths. Truths that we may well share. Walk with him a while and find out.

Whenever I mention being a writer, and the requisite ‘what kind of writer’ second question arises, I get two very different responses depending on my reply. As a science fiction writer, people go in one direction, but when I mention that I wrote non-fiction, things go a whole different way. Suddenly I’m being advised about webinars and seminars and coaching sessions and niche down, level up, $17, $180 programs, and on and on it goes.

I mean, I see people doing it. I get the potential for success. And I was right in the middle of writing along those lines, something that vibed with my integrity, yes, but wasn’t a book I particularly needed to bring to life. Just a project I thought fit the advice I’ve been so often bombarded with.

It was a book about how the unsettled inner child can so often interfere with us, just when we’re trying to get ahead in life—focused more on the business and financial end of things.

Which certainly had appeal.

But then, with the book already more than half-written—it got deleted.

Thing is, I’d half-written it and forgotten about it to an extent, with a lot of other projects on the front burners that were firing my imagination and keeping me busy.

And my first thought when I found it missing was simply—huh.

No panic.

Not much emotion at all.

Believe me when I tell you if it had been Inner Child Unleashed (my upcoming follow-up to Wounded Angels) or one of my fiction drafts, there would’ve been something there. I’m sure of it. At the very least, I would have taken pains to do a thorough search and make sure the worst was confirmed.

Not so with this one. Good idea, sure. Attractive for the prospective audience? I think almost definitely.

But just nothing I was all that invested in. More like ‘I should do this and then maybe I’ll find some measure of success’.

I know Wounded Angels is a powerful book, a really powerful book. I just finished the second edition, and it blew me away how impactful it is. Most people who read it will get something out of it, I truly believe that. But, readership may remain low. It may get labeled a memoir, nothing of interest, or glossed over for some other reason. All the books I write might find that same fate, and I might just find my niche, my vibe somewhere else as the years go by.

God, I hate the word ‘niche’, by the way. Even worse, niche down. Ugh. I’m a human being and a writer, not a brand.

Don’t you just hate the tunnel-visioned sameness that internet ‘success’ demands?

It’s funny. Every time I feel forced to go down a certain road, it just kind of makes my stomach hurt. And I wonder if this is self-defeating, or if it’s that I have real integrity that doesn’t allow me to do creative work that doesn’t matter.

Because in the end, ‘how to do business’, for me, doesn’t matter. Maybe that’s because I’m not very good at it. I dunno.

But how to heal from trauma, that matters.

How to envision the future, that matters too.

And connecting with people that give a shit about those things, that matters. That matters maybe most of all.

The rest of it, I mean… I get lots of advice.

But so far, I haven’t been able to take any of it.

So maybe someone else should write that book. I probably need to read it.

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Hey everyone,

We spend so much time in the trenches of healing—unpacking the past, doing the inner child work, and navigating the heavy intersections of trauma and identity. But lately, I’ve been thinking about what comes next. What happens after the heavy lifting is done?

The real work, it turns out, is actually living the life we healed for. It’s stepping back into our daily lives and creative pursuits without the old weight holding us down.

As many of you know, I went through a five-year creative silence—a complete crash and burn where I honestly didn’t know if I had another book in me. But when the dust finally settled and the inner work created some breathing room, a new story wrote itself.

That story is my new oceanpunk sci-fi novel, The Solarian Deep. It’s a gritty, grounded look at survival, evolution, and finding freedom in a high-pressure world.

To celebrate stepping back into the creative arena, I set the book to be completely free on Amazon this weekend. The response has blown past everything I expected—it just climbed to #5 in Cyberpunk Science Fiction!

This is also the kickoff for a huge summer campaign I’m running across my fiction catalog, with staggered deals coming over the next three weeks.

Because I respect your inbox and don’t want to spam you with a new email every time a price changes, I’m keeping this list focused on the big-picture journey. For those who want to mark their calendars, here is the master schedule for the next few weeks:

• Now – Aug 5: The Solarian Deep (FREE)

• Now – Aug 10: Dark Alignment ($0.99)

• Aug 11 – Aug 18: Too Much Information ($0.99)

• Aug 14 – Aug 21: The Gold Club ($0.99)

Thank you for being part of this community, for holding space during the quiet years, and for celebrating the loud ones with me.

Gratefully,

David

P.S. As part of the summer kickoff, my technothriller Dark Alignment is down to $0.99 today. I’ve actually heard some speculation recently about how these two books might connect. Dark Alignment is a near-future disaster story dealing with gravity going haywire, and The Solarian Deep takes place in a distant future where humanity had to flee underwater. Did the events of one cause the need for the other? We might not really know if these two stories meet until deeper in the Technoquatics series... but it is an interesting thought.

I’m in the thick of voicing my own audiobook version of Wounded Angels for you all, and it’s a labor of love, lemme tell you. The perfectionist in me is losing his mind, all that cutting and stopping, and re-doing a paragraph that sounded just right, except for the throat clear right in the middle of it. Ugh. I am in no danger of switching careers to anime actor, let’s put it that way. Still, this book is my story, a story of healing, intended to guide others into their own version. So hearing it in my own voice makes sense. Here’s a part of one of the final chapters, focused on a defiant inner child and his voice being cut down, over and over, until he shut down entirely. When I started speaking again, it was decades later, after a lifetime of pain. I pray that your journey won’t be quite so lengthy, though for me, it had to be this way.

..from Chapter 23.

Desire

The resistance—from fear-induced slowdowns to complete blockages—feels like a cosmic joke. It’s as if I’m hesitating to unleash the full-throated potential of my writing—afraid of the reverberations it might cause.

And this hesitation infuriates my inner child.

He’s in danger, I realize. Real, grave danger.

He thinks he needs to be ‘out there’ for safety, make himself important and powerful, and rich enough to hire bodyguards. Attack dogs. Large homes with tall fences.

A best-selling successful truth-teller badass that nobody can touch.

But only perfection will get him there. Because if it’s not perfect, they’ll know. And if they say so, to him, and to the world, everyone will know.

Imposter.

I’m not allowed to speak at full-volume unless my words are pitch-perfect, or I’ll get smacked down for making too much noise.

Take your goddamned foot off that fucking echo-pedal.

Damn. There’s a deep wound right there. His dad would yell that all the time, whenever he’d start playing the piano too loudly.

So he took up the drums.

Music can be powerful and expressive, sure, but he needs more.

He needs wealth.

He also needs to run the whole thing like a one-man mega-corporation, too—just that powerful, just that well-branded—and he needs to keep all the money.

Every. Fucking. Penny.

He’s obsessed with keeping every cent, because he’s gonna need it. He’s under siege. In the crosshairs. He won’t make it to the top, to safety and security, if he’s not careful.

Did listening stir something uncomfortable in you? Maybe a part of your story you haven’t looked at in a while?

You just touched one thread of this tapestry. You felt something, didn’t you?
But this isn’t a standalone novel. It’s a guidemap through the terrain of exhaustion and despair—and one man’s way out of it.

Maybe it can be yours, too.
Don’t stop at one step. Take the whole journey.

👉 Get Wounded Angels and Finish What We Started Here

Author bio: David Deane Haskell is a fusion writer who’s impossible to pin down. From new age future-vision with a deep dive into the human psyche, to the depths of real-life trauma and despair, David’s novels resonate somewhere between fact and fantasy, but always with a core of relatable truth.

David weaves personal reflections into his stories, creating a reading experience that blends what’s relatably human with deeply personal truths. Truths that we may well share. Walk with me a while and find out.

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This one didn’t.

Andrea Ashley took me all the way back: my mother dying when I was four, being told years later that she had died by suicide, the strange silence surrounding her life and death, the disappearance of almost an entire side of my family, the bullying, the scapegoating, leaving home at fourteen, and the shame that followed me long after childhood was supposedly over.

A lot happened to me as a child. I always knew that.

What took me much longer to understand was that the child who survived it had never stopped reacting to it.

The fear of rejection. The feeling that I was fundamentally wrong. The desperate need to fix what other people thought of me. The belief that if someone withdrew their love, it proved something terrible about who I was.

I carried all of that into adulthood without knowing what I was carrying.

Andrea understood this territory immediately. She didn’t make me translate it into polite language or explain why something that happened forty years ago could still feel completely present in the body. She listened closely, challenged me when something needed another look, and made connections during the conversation that genuinely stopped me.

At one point, she put two moments from my childhood beside each other and showed me a connection I had never consciously made.

That’s a good interviewer.

We also talked about addiction and recovery, my years in Japan, playing drums at Tokyo Disneyland, the eleven years I largely disappeared into a room, becoming a father, my relationship with my own father, and the experiences that eventually became Wounded Angels.

But underneath all of it was the same question:

What happens when a child survives—but the survival never ends?

I’m deeply grateful to Andrea for giving this story the time and space it needed. She is funny, direct, emotionally intelligent, and completely unafraid of the places where these conversations sometimes go. Adult Child doesn’t sanitize trauma or package healing into ten comfortable little steps. Andrea knows this world from the inside, and it shows.

Please listen to our conversation—and then take some time to explore and follow her excellent podcast. There is a tremendous archive there for anyone trying to understand how unresolved childhood pain continues to appear in adult relationships, identities, bodies, and lives.

This was not simply a place where I appeared to talk about my book.

Andrea helped me see parts of my own story differently.

You can also follow Andrea at @adultchildpod on Instagram and TikTok.

Andrea, thank you. I was honored to participate in this conversation.

✦ Author Bio

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Memoir That Lights the Path to Your Own Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

What does it feel like to survive rock bottom and still have to learn how to live afterwards?

It’s not a happily ever after when you’ve dealt with these traumas and addictions and real low-bottom struggles. It’s more like things are better, but w…

Read more

Just two days ago, the idea of missing my flight was unthinkable. So what happened?

I sustained a concussion, and the way it went down scared the hell out of me.

I remember the sudden stomach distress and nausea. Then, when I got up to try to make my way to bed, the memory gap began. From there, I’m piecing things together from vague flashback images and what my housemate told me: what seems to have been extreme vertigo, hitting my head on the hardwood floor, possibly losing consciousness, stumbling around, dropping my phone in the hallway, and somehow making my way back into the bathroom.

Somehow, I got back into bed, but I didn’t remember hitting my head. Lying there in excruciating pain, confused and disoriented, I thought I was having a stroke.

Next thing I knew, I was strapped down in an ambulance, still not quite sure what was going on. I spent the morning getting checked out, and the CT scans ruled out anything life-threatening. I was cleared to go home, with about 24 hours to go before I was supposed to leave the country. I was in no shape to do so.

If I stayed in Japan more than 90 days, I was required to establish residency. My flight was on day 90, which meant that if I missed it, boom. Welcome to day 91. No choice but to re-establish residency, enroll in national health insurance again, and accept everything that came with that, good and bad. For someone who had been doing the digital nomad thing largely to keep costs down, that was a major shift.

Still, right in that moment, nothing seemed more logical than to just stay. Even through the hospital stress and the pain, I kept thinking: I just want to stay here.

Then I thought: This is a huge decision, and I haven’t seriously considered the ramifications until right now, one day before departure.

I’m blessed to have friends I can trust to hear me out on big decisions. I ran it by them, asking if I was missing anything, if my logic was sound.

I wasn’t asking them to decide for me, just to tell me if there were any gaps in my thinking.

They didn’t seem to think so.

This sudden change of fortune got me thinking about some of the risks I’d taken last year: tooling around Thailand on a moped, living in places where healthcare was far less accessible. Those risks can seem exciting, part of the journey, until you find yourself in over your head. I almost did a few times.

Not that I regretted it. I am grateful for the adventure and the memories, but right then and there, I guess I just decided to stop.

In truth, I hadn’t really wanted to leave. I was planning to come back in four months anyway, but that, too, was intended to be temporary.

Only I didn’t want temporary anymore.

The inner child in me was screaming: Stay here. You’re safe here. You have friends here. Family here.

It’s good for your health.

It’s good for your soul.

You’re loved here.

This is home.

Even still, I wasn’t able to just abandon the plan. I thought: I’d like to stay, but no, I’m going to take the flight. I’m going to the Philippines, and I’ll come back in a few months. That’s the plan.

But then I hit my head, and everything changed.

The day of the flight, I kept thinking this was one of the most profound road-not-taken moments of my life.

I feel good about it, though it remains to be seen whether this was the right choice. It’ll be a lot more expensive than I planned, and a bit less adventurous. But I’m home. And it seems that’s where I’m supposed to be right now.

At home.

✦ If my words resonated today and you support this kind of writing…

👉 Consider funding these essays directly

✦ Author Bio

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Memoir That Lights the Path to Your Own Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

✦ There’s more coming — the inner child work, the failures, the breakthroughs, the parts we don’t usually say out loud. Subscribe so you don’t miss it.

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I joined Max Ariel on The Evidence Based Podcast to talk about recovery, trauma, shame, inner child work, and what healing can actually look like when you stop trying to force it into someone else’s idea of what that should be.

I’m grateful to Max for the conversation and for the room to speak honestly. These are not always easy things to talk about, but I do think they matter.

Here is the original session, with additional commentary from Max:

✦ If my work resonated today and you support this kind of healing…

👉 Consider funding these efforts directly

✦ Author Bio

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Memoir That Lights the Path to Your Own Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

✦ There’s more coming — the inner child work, the failures, the breakthroughs, the parts we don’t usually say out loud. Subscribe so you don’t miss it.

Subscribe now

Mine was a long road from there to here, and for decades I fit in nowhere at all— not in the places I grew up, not in the rooms I ended up in. And not in the stories I was supposed to want to tell, either. Which then led to five years where I couldn’t write at all.

I kept asking myself if I should quit.

I never could.

I still can’t tell you exactly why, except that I am committed to this in a way that has nothing to do with whether it’s going well.

The Solarian Deep is my fifth sci-fi novel and my best work so far. It’s about two people—Calista and Kyle—who want to be themselves in a place that actually understands them. Who never fit anywhere else, and find each other because of it. I didn’t plan that. It emerged the same way everything true finds its way into the world—awkwardly, painfully, when I wasn’t paying that much attention.

I’ve started calling what I write nom-fiction. Nominally fictional. Because my fiction was never entirely fiction, and my non-fiction — including this newsletter — can’t claim to be the whole truth either. It’s all the same project. It always has been. I’m just finally admitting it.

The next book on my computer, The Vibrants, goes deeper into that territory — imposter syndrome, defiance, the specific damage that comes from growing up in rooms that don’t see you. There’s a free short story from that world, Tommytune, at daviddeanehaskell.com if you want a first taste.

The Solarian Deep is on sale today at 99 cents. If you’ve ever felt like you had something inside you that the world wasn’t particularly interested in — this one’s for you. Let me know what you think in the comments, we all need to hear each other’s stories.

I’ve also been connecting with fellow sci-fi author Patrick Abbott, who wrote the novel Fallen—a first-contact story about what it costs to be the person standing between two worlds.

Five years after aliens known as Sabia arrive and refuse to leave, the world holds its breath. When former infantryman Brendan Murphy throws himself into the path of an attack on a Sabia diplomat, he wakes beneath an alien ceiling — his shattered body healed by hands not of this Earth. Grateful, suspicious, and painfully aware he’s become a living bargaining chip, Brendan is pulled into a fragile dance of first contact where one wrong move could ignite global panic. Haunted by battles he can’t forget and choices he can’t undo, he’ll have to decide what he’s willing to betray to keep a spark of trust alive.

FALLEN by Patrick Abbott

✦ If my words resonated today and you support this kind of writing…

👉 Consider funding these essays directly

✦ Author Bio

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Memoir That Lights the Path to Your Own Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

✦ There’s more coming — the inner child work, the failures, the breakthroughs, the parts we don’t usually say out loud. Subscribe so you don’t miss it.

Subscribe now

Our Dried Voices

For me, this story evoked imagery and symbolism reminiscent of The Worthing Saga by Orson Scott Card, a novel I’ve always loved.

In both of those stories, the notion of everything going sideways, and wondering if you’re the only one who notices it—it’s one of those classic story elements that stays with you. In these scary and bizarre times, I think, even more than ever.

Hickey’s characterization of people living in a dystopian, communal colony is chilling: a bunch of zombie sleepwalkers, not knowing good from bad, having lost the power to even engage in any meaningful conversation any longer—all except for one.

This is a place you’d never want to set foot in. But like rubbernecking at a car crash, it’s hard to look away.

Hickey uses clever graphics throughout the building narrative, giving us, the readers, the same clues that the one awake colonist keeps trying to leave. It’s a clever way to keep us involved in the mystery, even as the others gloss over it like the deadened mind-slaves they were forced to become.

I’m in the middle of working on the best book I’ve ever written. I’ve been off and on writing it for a couple of years now. It’s science fiction. It’s optimistic future fiction about creativity and what it means to be human.

The characters all mean something to me, and the plot is ever evolving. It has me pretty invested, even as I create it.

But the thing is, it’s going really slow. And when I say slow, I’m talking slow, slow, slow.

I’ve been able to distract myself with other elements of the business—working hard on my website for a couple of weeks, for example, and setting up auto-responders for new subscribers so people can slide smoothly into the David Deane Haskell ecosystem.

That stuff occupies a lot of time, and requires some creativity, though not the deep kind that a sci-fi novel demands. And up until recently, it has allowed me to work in fits and spurts on The Vibrants without worrying so much about the finish line.

But I’ve finally reached a good place with the infrastructure, which you would think is a good thing—but it left me with the creative void that is the rest of my novel, and nothing to distract from the fact that I’m not the kind of writer who can go at it for four, six, or eight hours at a burst.

My creative writing happens in the morning. When it’s done, it’s done. After that, I can edit, but I can’t come up with new stuff. I just can’t.

It’s painstaking and frustrating, and I feel like I should be getting there faster.

But maybe that’s the beauty of it. Maybe that’s why this book is special. I haven’t rushed. I haven’t forced anything. The creative ideas have come from a relaxed, organic place—naturally.

So that’s the process, at least as it stands today. I can do a bit of creative writing almost every day, but just a bit—a few paragraphs, a part of a chapter. And there’s so much more to go. I’m around 60 to 65% done. I will get there. I just can’t say when.

My mistake in the past has always been to put a deadline on myself, and then just get it out there. Somehow. That was how it had to be, to get my books published, because otherwise I would just procrastinate myself into the ground.

But The Vibrants is different.

I told myself I wouldn’t publish it until I was proud of it. Truly proud of it.

And it’s getting there. I’m optimistically aiming for a summer release of The Vibrants, which will be Book I of The Resona Series.

Meanwhile, there is a stand-alone story from this elaborate Resona universe I’m crafting—Tommytune is a short story about a kid who can’t perform on command — and accidentally creates his best work the moment he stops trying. You can get it for free on my website: daviddeanehaskell.com

I may not be a fast writer and I’m not much for marketing, but knowing myself, making peace with who I am, even finding a way to love something about myself I used to hate—like being a slow-ass writer—that’s where I shine.

So that’s why I’m writing this today, and including a partner novel that aligns with my work, because I write on mindfully healing the past right alongside optimistically envisioning the future. That’s what David Deane Haskell novels and essays are all about, and more and more, I’m integrating. I’m so grateful that you’re a part of it.

One more note about today’s featured novel: Our Dried Voices is currently on sale, just $2.99 down from $4.99. You can find it here: Our Dried Voices by Greg Hickey

✦ If my words resonated today and you support this kind of writing…

👉 Consider funding these essays directly

✦ Author Bio

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Memoir That Lights the Path to Your Own Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

✦ There’s more coming — the inner child work, the failures, the breakthroughs, the parts we don’t usually say out loud. Subscribe so you don’t miss it.

Subscribe now

I’m proud of my early work in the publishing business. I wrote four novels out of a place of desperation, but also a grain of hope.

And that hope never left me. It came out of some of the darkest times of my adult life: failure after failure, bafflement and confusion at what addiction was doing to me, and the desperate hope that I could figure out something to keep me afloat that wouldn’t fall apart when I did.

That’s when the five-year writer’s block came over me.

I wasn’t doing nothing, far from it. Some of the most intensive emotional and spiritual healing of my life was happening, a necessary chrysalis that continues to this day.

But I couldn’t do any writing of note. I tried. Desperately. But nothing came of it.

When I emerged early in 2024, I was creating from a totally different place—my writing had changed forever.

The nonfiction came first: Wounded Angels, my healing memoir. A pair of Substack publications: this Inner Child Journal, as well as serialized and short fiction on David Deane Haskell Stories. New full-length novels followed, the first of which I published just a month ago.

But meanwhile, those four books, the original four, remained.

I’m proud of them, always have been. But I had no support. I was deeply unwell. And I felt a desperate urgency, a rush to get them out so I could somehow try to survive off them—which never actually happened.

So they felt rushed, and I knew they had problems. They didn’t come out the way I wanted them to, despite doing the best I could at the time.

The early version drew painful criticism, especially for proofreading and execution. They were hard reviews to face, but they were not entirely wrong. I wasn’t in a position then to give the book what it needed.

After a time, when the books didn’t go anywhere, I sort of just let them go. I didn’t even keep track of the original manuscripts, to the point where I couldn’t even go back in and edit them if I wanted to.

Somewhere along the line, quite recently, I reclaimed those books.

I had to download one from a site where it had been sitting. I was able to grab another from Amazon. Another was still on my hard drive somehow, and so on. Finally, I had my books in my hands, ready to tackle those second editions. All I needed was the time and the energy.

That time is now. As I established more stability and structure in my here-and-now publishing work, I was also able to tackle the repair work for my beloved four original books.

Last week, I published the first of these second editions. It was one of my favorite concepts, but fixing it was daunting. There were a lot of moving parts to pull together. It took a while, but I’m pleased to say that Dark Alignment, my third published novel, became the first I was able to rebirth.

In this book, Dark Alignment, although it’s very much a disaster story, it highlights hope and cooperation in the face of certain death. I had just lived through a 9.1 earthquake, which now that I think of it was probably the catalyst for writing this book.

In that real-life disaster, I saw the best in people, people just like me, all of us shell-shocked and destabilized in the face of mega-tsunamis and nuclear meltdowns. It really did feel like the end, just like my beleaguered heroes feel in Dark Alignment.

You might wonder what any of this is doing on The Inner Child Journal. The honest answer is that for me, the fiction and the healing work come from the same place — the same tapestry of healing the past, understanding the now, and envisioning the future . Dark Alignment is part of that story too.

This month, Dark Alignment is part of a broader book promotion, its first real step back into the world in this new form. If what I’ve shared here speaks to you, I’d love for you to take a look. There might be something in there for you.

Browse David's Book Promotion

✦ Author Bio

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Memoir That Lights the Path to Your Own Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

There’s more coming — the inner child work, the failures, the breakthroughs, the parts we don’t usually say out loud. Subscribe so you don’t miss it.

Subscribe now

I’ve been in town for a month. They have a museum. I thought I should go, and this is the last free day before I leave, so here I am.

I’m taking it all in still, sitting off in the corner so as not to disturb, writing this while it’s fresh.

When I walked in, I was hot, a little irritated that I had to pay, although it’s cheap. As I looked around I thought, ‘Oh, it’s old stuff, yeah, ancient history museum, old stuff, that’s it. It is what it is. I appreciate it, but whatever, whatever.’

But as I walked around and took in the surroundings—the artifacts, the useful tools, the weapons of war—I started to feel closer to it and more appreciative.

And when I sat down to take a rest, I started a line of thinking about these people who made these things and how I don’t make anything. I’m a writer and a musician. There are recordings and writing, but when I’m gone, it’s all gone. I’m not leaving anything behind. I don’t make pottery. I don’t make beautiful, useful objects.

The thought then crossed my mind, when I’m gone, the fountain is gone. I’m not sure why I came up with the word fountain, but it hit me and it felt right.

And I walked around some more and saw some more really ancient, intricate creations. ‘The fountain’s a fountain and God is the water’, I thought. These people who created these things channeled something eternal. Their creations, these objects? They’re God taken form. The fountains are gone, but God remains. The water is eternal.

But such creations don’t have to be tangible. Everything crumbles to dust eventually. Impermanent evidence of God flowing through us.

I started crying. Choking up, even as I noticed the people around me. I was appreciating this museum more than I’ve ever appreciated any such space before.

But I also realized that after I leave, I’ll see God in all the objects around me. The artisans and craftsmen and the creators who make the buildings, the useful things, and the beautiful things.

I make things too. It’s tangible in its own way. You can hold my book, listen to my story. You could hold space with me as I perform live, so long as this fountain is still breathing and walking around.

The Sukhothai Museum means so much to me now. I don’t know if I’ll ever return, but once was enough.

✦ If my words resonated today and you support this kind of writing…

👉 Consider funding these essays directly

✦ Author Bio

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Memoir That Lights the Path to Your Own Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

There’s more coming — the inner child work, the failures, the breakthroughs, the parts we don’t usually say out loud. Subscribe so you don’t miss it.

Subscribe now

But it’s got a real nasty infection, back around the tail there. A big, gross, open sore. Fleas, or worms maybe—or something even worse.

I did a bit of research, and the warning I got back was clear: Yes, it is potentially contagious. Yes, humans can get infected. Do Not Touch!

Okay then, I won’t.

But it keeps coming up to me as I sit on my porch, meowing sweetly, trying to rub up against me. And I haven’t been as kind as I wish I had been. Shooing it away. Acting like it had the plague, though it kind of does.

Obviously, the animal has no clue. But I assume it’s in a lot of pain, or certainly at least a lot of discomfort. And I started to feel pity, and for that matter, empathy. I’ve had my share of itchy nasties in my life, and it’s not that fun. And it’s nice to have a distraction and to get a little bit of affection. I understand all that.

But anyway, this morning, the animal actually made it into my house. And that’s a no-no. Because if it gets into a hiding place and then I have to go out, all hell could break loose. I have to get it out.

It’s not the first animal that’s gotten in. They’re pretty bold around these parts. Survivors, every one of them.

So I shooed it away, and it bolted quick. Smart cat. It knew not to try to hang out. And I looked at it across the way, and it was looking back at me, and I felt bad.

There’s this meat that I have that I’ve been feeding to one of the local dogs. Lunch meat kind of thing. Spicy. Slimy. Liverwurst edgy. But come on, they’re strays, right? I would think it would appreciate it.

So, feeling bad, I went and got the meat, offered it to the cat. The cat came on over, sniffed it, meowed, and tried to get affection again. I’m backing up. No, no, get away from me. No, just eat the meat. You don’t want it?

And I tossed it across the way, and it went and had a look, but it wasn’t interested.

This cat has no idea why I’m rejecting it. And I suddenly thought about toxicity and boundaries. How painful it can be for everybody. Because honestly, it’s not the cat’s fault. The cat doesn’t know it’s toxic. It’s just trying to be friendly. Just trying to connect.

And I can’t explain. I’m just trying to stay away. And when it pushes the boundaries, then I start reacting more forcefully, then feeling bad about it, trying to make up for it, which makes the cat more confused, and then it tries to get closer again.

Just like in real life.

The next morning, as I was enjoying the rhythmic chirping of tropical birds, another cat joined me. This one was healthy from the looks of it. Strong black and white coloration, an air of confident presence to it. He didn’t come up to me right away. Instead, he sat across the way and sized me up. Not demanding anything, just connecting.

So I said, “You want some food?” No reaction. I went and got the pet food I’d picked up, an improvement over the slimy lunch meat, but when I came back it looked skittish. So I placed it in a safe location and backed off.

Just as it was considering my offer, our old friend the cat with the sores popped in from around the corner. Simultaneously startled, they became mirrors of each other—heads down, ears lowered, tails swishing in agitation.

The sick cat broke contact first, realizing I was in the mix, and moved to rub up against me, begging me for protection.

I remember feeling like that myself, back when I got bullied. I’d try to befriend charismatic or imposing kids, hoping they’d step in. They never did like it. And neither did I, with this cat. And since I still didn’t want him to touch me, I shooed him away. Again.

Not so much, really. I didn’t think I was being that mean. But he reacted like I’d betrayed him, and he bolted—realizing he had no ally in me, I suppose.

So I offered the food to the other cat.

I would have fed both of them, if the sick one had stayed. C’est la vie.

The other cat ate some. I gave it some more. When it was done, it left, no drama, no annoying fawning. It even stopped along the way to turn back so I could get a nice picture.

I don’t know what this means. And at this point, I’m probably anthropomorphizing the whole thing. But somehow that relationship with that other cat felt healthier. And at the same time, I felt guilty for not being nicer to the original one, who I’d known for longer. Who clearly could have used a friend.

The morning after that, I was trying to make a video for you guys, my online readership. And sure enough, he came and interrupted me. But the video wasn’t going too well anyway, so I decided to feed him instead.

And he was rubbing up against me as usual, and I noticed he was rubbing up against the furniture too. And he must be itchy as hell because he’s got some kind of really nasty infection. And if I knew how to call a vet, I would probably do that.

But anyway, I’m feeding him, and he’s starving. I watch as he finishes his third bowl of food. He’s eating more hungrily than any of the other animals that I’ve been feeding. And now, finally, he seems to relax.

He’s a pretty cat—except for the sores on the back of him. And he’s really quite friendly.

I actually like him a lot.

For our first inter-species codependent relationship, I think we did okay.

✦ Why The Inner Child Journal Exists

You won’t find “10 Tips to Love Yourself” here. You’ll find the emotional truth at the end of the tip list—the part no one wants to talk about. But for those of us brave enough, talking about it is the only way out of the woods.

This is a space for people doing real healing. For those whose inner children still throw tantrums, freeze up, or whisper, ‘we’re not safe yet’. If that’s you, know this: You’re not behind. You’re not defective. You’re just healing honestly.

I don’t speak from theory, my words are written out of painful experience. These essays aren’t designed to ‘boost my numbers’, but to find the right people, those who are on this same path with me. So if you find it meaningful, I need you to share it.

Readers like you, the ones who get it, are the reason I’m forging ahead with this labor of love. Help me keep going.

✦ If my words resonated today and you support this kind of writing…

👉 Consider funding these essays directly

✦ Author Bio

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Memoir That Lights the Path to Your Own Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

🎥 First, watch the short viral clip here — it’s pure joy.

I’m learning a lot, having a little drumming jam interaction I did with local kids yesterday just take off. It’s a trip, watching it unfold (right off the bat it had like a hundred likes..and my average over the lifetime of most posts is like ten!). The insights are telling as well. The place where people liked the most? Right at the spot where my drumming buddy triumphantly caught the stick, which looked really iffy until the last second! What’s not to like, right?

And like it they did!

I didn’t even edit much, I just cut out the boring stuff at the beginning and the end, added a label “Feelin the groove in Chiang Mai”, and tossed it up. A day later, it’s got over 25,000 views. Two and a half thousand likes. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

I realize this is still small potatoes compared to many, but it’s quite a ride for me.

To be honest, I’ve been dreaming of that sort of thing happening here on Substack, with my writing. And I still believe that will unfold, when the time is right, and enough of you early adaptors get the word out.

But at the moment the universe is throwing music opportunities at me left and right, and I’m leaning into it and feeling incredibly grateful.

Grateful enough that I wanted to share it with you, my reader. Because this goes hand in hand with the healing work, doesn’t it though? Being able to step back out onto the life stage after long periods of recovery. And this time to be able to really absorb it and enjoy it like we never could when we were struggling.

This is what it’s all about for me. Connection and expression, and finding joy in these little things that just come out of nowhere.

But here’s the really good part—this never should have happened at all. Or at least, it went against all of my plans and intentions for the week, and I was quite upset going into it.

You see, I got to Chiang Mai late this past Friday, and had a hotel for 3 nights with the hope that I would find a place for the month right away.

Except I didn’t.

Things are tight here and it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. So hard that I started to really stress about it. My beloved daughter will come to town in a few weeks and I wanted to make sure everything was just right. Yet it seemed I wouldn’t be able to find a decent place at all, never mind in just a few days.

So in frustration, I grabbed a hotel elsewhere for an extra four nights. And moved in yesterday, and continued the search. Finally, near dinner time, I found a place that seemed decent enough, and put money down on it so I could finally breathe.

And then I went to find a restaurant.

And I heard drums off in the distance.

Marching drums.

My kind of drums.

I haven’t heard marching drums in Thailand all year, but there they were. So I followed the rhythm and happened upon these guys. And we clicked, and we made a video. Which is blowing up as we speak.

And none of that would have happened if I had found a place right away as planned, and hadn’t had to grab a hotel for additional nights in another part of town.

The part of town where the drummers lived. Only I didn’t even know it.

Serendipity, man.

I love it.

🎥 The video that synchronicity made is here — don’t miss it!

---

Subscribe now

✦ Creator Bio - David Deane Haskell

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Journey to Wholeness Through Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

➤ Read Wounded Angels here

✦ Why The Inner Child Journal Exists

You won’t find “10 Tips to Love Yourself” here. You’ll find the emotional truth at the end of the tip list—the part no one wants to talk about.

This is a space for people doing real healing. For those whose inner children still throw tantrums, freeze up, or whisper, ‘we’re not safe yet’. If that’s you, welcome. You’re not behind. You’re not defective. You’re just healing honestly.

David doesn’t speak from theory. He speaks from the trenches. And he’s building this journal for others who need a witness, a mirror, or a moment of ‘God, someone else gets it’.

✦ Why Your Voice Matters Here

This isn’t a community for passive reading. It’s a space for shared resonance. You are not here to consume. You’re here to be present. When you comment, when you share, when you say, ‘this hit me’, you’re helping build something sacred.

Don’t recommend this because it’s trendy.
Recommend it because it’s true.

That’s how this becomes ours.

To my dear, valued reader,

If my words resonated today and you’d like to help me continue this work…

👉 Help Me Keep Writing

David

You know the song. Bet it’s in your head already, hmm?

I know people who do that so well. Letting shit go with wild abandon. Especially things they have no control over. I followed a guru a while back who was deep into that stuff. Gave me exercises on how to do it, even.

And I tried to make it work. I really, really tried.

Those folks who can pull it off amaze me. They all seem very sincere, and I have no reason to think they’re lying.

I envy them.

In all these years of growth and healing, I haven’t been able to make it work. Not with all my mindfulness practices and inner child work and hard-won healing.

Not when something hits my nervous system, anyway. No way, Charlie.

I can logic it all the way to the moon and back, sit with the thoughts and the emotions and the physiological stuff, too. Realize that I’m powerless to do anything, that there’s no good reason to stay there—in every measurable way, I’m better off dropping it.

Except that I can’t.

That’s just not the way my system operates. And I don’t know if there’s anything that I can do about it. No matter how mindful I am, how much I force myself to follow the common wisdom—even while my system is screaming at me to bar the door and curl up on the floor—I still end up riding out these intense, unpleasant physiological storms from time to time.

So yesterday, I had an unpleasant run-in with an authority figure, someone who literally had power over where I could be and what I could do. And he wasn’t giving me an easy time of it. The end result was not outright rejection, but postponement, which means it wasn’t the end of the world or anything—just some stress about paperwork and a deadline.

It’s bureaucracy, not punishment. I know that.

But standing there, it didn’t feel bureaucratic. It felt personal. The officer who was questioning me struggled to pronounce my name. He questioned whether I had prepared properly, and whether I’d made mistakes in booking my departure (I hadn’t, although it was scheduled for the last possible day).

While waiting to learn my fate, their national anthem suddenly rang out throughout the building, and everyone stopped what they were doing and stood tall, which hit me as a ‘do it or else’ moment. Meanwhile, looped informational screens featured a guy suspected of committing a crime being tossed into a cell, over and over.

By then, my nervous system had moved straight into: Oh my god, worst-case scenario time—what if you’re rejected, what then? Or worse, what if they take you into a back room for some *real* grilling? You realize your status is only valid for eight more days, don’t you! You’ll have to leave, pack up and jump on some expensive flight to who knows where! You screwed it all up!

Fear and dread—those where the themes of the moment. Once I got out of the immediate situation, though, and had a chance to come down off of fight-or-flight mode? Those old familiar floods of toxic shame flowed, gushed, and sloshed all through me.

Blech.

The physiological aftershocks have been hitting me in waves ever since, and it’s been over twenty-four hours now. It’s better than it was, but man, these shame attacks are horrible. I don’t know how many people can relate to these things, but for those who know it—we never forget it.

So, why the shame, or where do my thoughts go to that evoke such shame?

A lot of it’s got to do with the fact that I have friends here, and we’ve got fun plans scheduled for next month. People are counting on me. I’ve been really well treated. I’m really grateful for the way things have gone here. All along my journeys, I’ve met wonderful people, and when I start to form a connection, I want to just never let them down.

And the funny thing is, this situation is completely out of my hands. It’s nothing that I have control over, and it wouldn’t be me letting them down at all. It would just be a system snafu, bureaucracy, red tape, gone wild. You know how that goes.

But still, that’s not what my physiology tells me. It tells me if you’d done it this way or that way, if you’d started earlier, if you’d made choice A instead of choice B, everything would be okay. And that’s because you just can’t do it right.

These aren’t mental thoughts so much anymore, or at least if the mental thoughts cross my mind, I’m able to recognize them, dismiss them as chatter. But the trigger reaction, that hit of negative emotions, is nothing fun to sit with, let me tell you — even when I know exactly where it’s coming from and exactly why it’s happening.

If I could make it go away, I would. But that’s just not how my system operates.

Although I did manage to think through a lot of the less-worst-case scenarios since I got hit with this setback. Realistically speaking, I probably don’t have to change plans too much, even if the worst happens. But the delay is such that I have to depart for a while. I could leave for a few days, turn around and come right back on a fresh 30-day visa. I have every right to. I’m a legitimate traveler. I’ve done nothing wrong.

And yet, this underlying there’s something wrong with you, you don’t have the right to do these things that everybody else seems to enjoy doing — that trauma stuff, man, it resonates low and strong.

Maybe that’s the part nobody warns you about: how shame sneaks in wearing an authoritarian’s uniform. It isn’t the hassle that hurts — it’s the echo of youth, of waiting to see if you’re still in good graces, or if maybe you’re in trouble again. Maybe it’s that stamp of approval we’re after, that permission slip that tells us we’re safe again. For now.

In the end, a little more than twenty-four hours in, I’m essentially restored. I got the paperwork sorted out and submitted—everything else is quite literally out of my hands.

Looking back on it now, once the dust settled and my body stopped sounding the alarms, a few things became clearer.

The power behind these fight-or-flight mechanisms is no joke, that was one thing that came clear. Even when I know (intellectually) that these worst-case imaginings are unlikely, and wouldn’t be the end of the world even if they did come to pass, there is still a great emotional power behind them that is primal, and real. My system is fighting tooth and nail to convince me these horrible scenarios aren’t just likely—but life-or-death realities.

No matter what, you can’t let these things happen!

The ‘realness’ is something that I think I haven’t thought about much, until now. If I can keep that in mind for next time, it’s quite an insight to bring into the mix. Because sure, we can imagine the good result instead, relax and tell ourselves it won’t be that bad—but if those rational thoughts don’t have the power of a frantic nervous system behind them, they won’t tip the scales much. Thought without emotion is impermanent and unimpressive, really. It’s when the whole system gets behind something that real shifts in perspective and motivation happen.

If only we could channel that towards the good stuff! And to an extent, with patience and practice, and sharing these insights, we can—somewhat. But it’s evolution, baby. We’re designed to put a whole lot of stock in the bad stuff, particularly if it feels awfully immediate and life-changing (or even life-threatening).

I also realized how valuable the support of understanding friends can be, in times like this. Trusted friends, people who know better than to give vague assurances or dismissive positivity.

I am blessed to have such support, both locally and back home, which I lean on heavily. And for what it’s worth, it was distressing, despite my full understanding that this sort of thing is simply par for the course, everyday annoyances most everyone goes through.

I take heed of the fact that I can get pretty spun out and emotional in these cases, and that I should be mindful not to exaggerate the real-world implications, and the fact that this amounts to ‘emotional hurdles to grow from’, and not any kind of a serious problem like so many do face every day. I am careful about self-pity, exaggeration, and the fact that by and large I live a very blessed and charmed life, with all kinds of advantages and opportunities I am exceedingly lucky to have.

Even so, distressing and upsetting were the words of the day, and even some real fight-or-flight fears in there messing up my groove. But I got through it, I wasn’t abusive or unkind to anyone, I didn’t completely break down and fall apart (until I got home), and I began the process of self-care and self-kindness as soon as I was able.

I hope that in sharing my story, it might help you to find identification, if you’ve been in this position and can relate.

Can you?

I’d love to hear your story of struggle and solution—or even just struggle, if you’re still working on it. I often find that solutions present themselves more easily when shared. And on that note, any advice on let it go?

Me, I’m still working on that. And man do I wish I were better at it!

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✦ Author Bio - David Deane Haskell

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Journey to Wholeness Through Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

➤ Read Wounded Angels here

✦ Why The Inner Child Journal Exists

You won’t find “10 Tips to Love Yourself” here. You’ll find the emotional truth at the end of the tip list—the part no one wants to talk about.

This is a space for people doing real healing. For those whose inner children still throw tantrums, freeze up, or whisper, ‘we’re not safe yet’. If that’s you, welcome. You’re not behind. You’re not defective. You’re just healing honestly.

David doesn’t speak from theory. He speaks from the trenches. And he’s building this journal for others who need a witness, a mirror, or a moment of ‘God, someone else gets it’.

✦ Why Your Voice Matters Here

This isn’t a community for passive reading. It’s a space for shared resonance. You are not here to consume. You’re here to be present. When you comment, when you share, when you say, ‘this hit me’, you’re helping build something sacred.

Don’t recommend this because it’s trendy.
Recommend it because it’s true.

That’s how this becomes ours.

To my dear, valued reader,

If my words resonated today and you’d like to help me continue this work…

👉 Help Me Keep Writing

David

Hi Reader.

You might have noticed that I’ve been paywalling my work. If a publication with a lot of paid articles isn’t of interest to you, no worries—feel free to unsubscribe. Chances are, if you haven’t found much value here yet, you probably won’t want to stick around.

Going forward, I’ll be sharing more about my upcoming healing and inner child novels: a book about doing business when your inner child has other ideas, and the follow-up to Wounded Angels: A Journey to Wholeness Through Inner Child Healing, tentatively titled Inner Child, Unleashed.

If what I’ve written so far has valuable for you—congratulations. You’re in the right place. Things are about to level up in a huge way.

Some things will still be free, but less and less over time. What I have to share, and the way I’m able to convey it, is simply too valuable to keep giving away.

Thank you for understanding—and if you haven’t already, I invite you to become a paid subscriber so you can access everything I have to offer.

Subscribe now

Wounded Angels: A Journey to Wholeness Through Inner Child Healing goes straight to the core of David Deane’s Haskell’s experience, and the revelations inner child work led to. By exposing the wound, then healing it in real-time in this book, Haskell shares what real healing actually feels like.

Let Haskell’s journey become the catalyst for your own.

➤ Read the book here

✦ Author Bio - David Deane Haskell

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Journey to Wholeness Through Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

✦ Why The Inner Child Journal Exists

You won’t find “10 Tips to Love Yourself” here. You’ll find the emotional truth at the end of the tip list—the part no one wants to talk about.

This is a space for people doing real healing. For those whose inner children still throw tantrums, freeze up, or whisper, ‘we’re not safe yet’. If that’s you, welcome. You’re not behind. You’re not defective. You’re just healing honestly.

David doesn’t speak from theory. He speaks from the trenches. And he’s building this journal for others who need a witness, a mirror, or a moment of ‘God, someone else gets it’.

✦ Why Your Voice Matters Here

This isn’t a community for passive reading. It’s a space for shared resonance. You are not here to consume. You’re here to be present. When you comment, when you share, when you say, ‘this hit me’, you’re helping build something sacred.

Don’t recommend this because it’s trendy.
Recommend it because it’s true.

That’s how this becomes ours.

To my dear & valued reader,

If my words resonated today and you’d like to help me continue this work…

👉 Help Me Keep Writing

David

We think of grounding as a calm, reflective act. I’m out of sorts, I need to get grounded. Not much different from I need a break. But that’s not always the case—as I learned when I stumbled on something unforgettable in a forest in Bali… one stubborn force of nature that stopped me in my tracks.

Read more

Wounded Angels: A Journey to Wholeness Through Inner Child Healing goes straight to the core of David Deane’s Haskell’s experience, and the revelations inner child work led to. By exposing the wound, then healing it in real-time in this book, Haskell shares what real healing actually feels like.

Let Haskell’s journey become the catalyst for your own.

➤ Read the book here

My Story is My Story

‘It’s not a contest.’

I’ve heard that line more times than I can count — usually right after someone undermines my experience, equating it to something ‘similar’ they went through and ‘got over easily’—an apples-to-oranges dismissal that never rang true.

So many folks get defensive when you talk about levels. The very idea of damage comparison puts them on defense.

But why?

Read more

After finally breaking through the fear of my first podcast, I found myself facing the next step—saying yes a second time. And sure enough, the nerves came back: Will this one go as well? Will I stumble? Do I even have more to say, or did I already spend it all on the first one?

The answer, I discovered, is yes. And no. And something entirely different.

Because this time I sat down with Julia Anchorhaven, host of the Mystical Wellness Podcast, and the conversation went places that weren’t on my map at all. Julia has a way of opening up quiet, luminous spaces in her questions—spaces where I found myself speaking truths I didn’t know I was ready to share.

How It Happened

I noticed that Julia had done some work on inner child on her podcast, which it turns out was a good setup for our conversation, and after a quick connection, we decided to record together. She welcomed me in so warmly that the whole experience felt less like an interview and more like stepping into a shared experience.

We touched on the mystical, the healing journey, the fears that still surface, and the strange beauty of letting your voice actually be heard, through fiction, through true stories, through music—however it happens.

As usual, I walked away grateful. Not because it was “perfect” (apologies for the tech issues, those were entirely on my end this time!), but because it was real.

Listen In

So here it is—the full conversation with Julia on the Mystical Wellness Podcast.

I encourage you not only to listen to our exchange, but also to check out more of Julia’s episodes at the link below. Her work creates a kind of grounded magic that blends healing, wonder, and everyday life in a way I deeply admire.

https://anchorhaven.substack.com/podcast

I hope you enjoy our time together here, and that it leaves you with something meaningful to carry.

Until next time,

David

✦ Author Bio - David Deane Haskell

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Journey to Wholeness Through Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

✦ Why The Inner Child Journal Exists

You won’t find “10 Tips to Love Yourself” here. You’ll find the emotional truth at the end the tip list—the part no one wants to talk about.

This is a space for people doing real healing. For those whose inner children still throw tantrums, freeze up, or whisper, ‘we’re not safe yet’. If that’s you, welcome. You’re not behind. You’re not defective. You’re just healing honestly.

David doesn’t speak from theory. He speaks from the trenches. And he’s building this journal for others who need a witness, a mirror, or a moment of ‘God, someone else gets it’.

✦ Why Your Voice Matters Here

This isn’t a community for passive reading. It’s a space for shared resonance. You are not here to consume. You’re here to be present. When you comment, when you share, when you say, ‘this hit me’, you’re helping build something sacred.

Don’t recommend this because it’s trendy.
Recommend it because it’s true.

And if you feel something reading this?
Say something. That’s how this becomes ours.

Wounded Angels: A Journey to Wholeness Through Inner Child Healing goes straight to the core of David Deane’s Haskell’s experience, and the revelations inner child work led to. By exposing the wound, then healing it in real-time in this book, Haskell shares what real healing actually feels like.

Let David’s journey become the catalyst for your own.

➤ Read the book here

I tried. I really did.

I separated my fiction and non-fiction. I experimented. Different titles, platforms, graphic images—

even my own name.

Then came the advice:

‘That cover will never sell.’

But it feels right to me.

‘Change your book title, the purpose isn’t clear.’

But I didn’t choose the title, my inner child did.

‘Focus on your niche. Don’t dilute your message.’

Okay. Well, Inner Child is at the core of my healing journey, and the cornerstone my non-fiction writing is built upon. So it makes sense.

But life keeps handing me more than just that.

So I write it all.

So yeah, my ‘branding’ ends up messy—snapshots instead of a polished message.

Case in point: less than a month ago, out of nowhere, my ‘old life’ as a professional drummer came rushing back. A small invite to help a few drummers in Bali snowballed into a nationwide tour.

Suddenly, musicians were following me on social media — and posting clips of me teaching and playing the drums! I didn’t even know they were out there until Indonesian friends started showing me their phones.

It’s cool as hell, but..

Argh! My focus! What happened to my beautiful social media focus! What will the subscribers make of it!? What have you done!?

Except actually, that’s cool as hell. So up went the clips, unfocused, but cool. I just didn’t care anymore.

It was dope. How could I not post it?

Maybe this is me playing the game, though. Maybe what I have to offer is exactly this. A story of trauma and addiction recovery, followed by deep spiritual awakening and mindfulness training, so that anything is possible.

Which means I can never do the safe storefront thing—where nothing changes and nothing surprises.

I just can’t.

My life is dope, and I do dope shit.

Sometimes that means I hop onstage after decades away and jam like nobody’s business. I teach, I get wined and dined, people take dozens of photos, and everybody says, “Ah ha! THAT’S what you’re supposed to be doing!”

And yeah, it IS what I’m supposed to be doing, in that moment.

Walking in and seeing my name in big letters, my first thought was: this is how it will be with the books next time — whether we’re talking healing; the sweeping human–AI creativity saga The Vibrants (a related stand-alone short story is already available HERE); the follow-up to Wounded Angels; and articles on trauma and addiction, and how I overcame them (with the help of good Samaritans and powers beyond my understanding) — to the point where my life is dope, and I do dope shit.

But how can I pull that off?

Plenty of you read this every week. But only 2 have gone all in with a paid subscription — one for the fiction, one for the healing. That circle says this work matters: the healing, the stories, the whole dope life experiment.

My inner child healing book, Wounded Angels, is dope. I show you HOW I DID IT. HOW IT FELT. And you can look at my life now and see how I’m living it, compared to ten years ago when I was a literal hermit with the shades drawn all day, a hundred pounds heavier and drunk every day.

So buy the book. Subscribe if you want the whole ride. And if you ever catch me drumming in Asia, even better.

And reach out. I don’t just want your support, I want to know you.

Because here’s the one thing I know for sure. I see who is supporting me. And I check out what they’re doing, too. I read and I engage. I know their names.

And if and when this dope life turns into a “brand” somehow, a really offbeat and chaotic one if history reflects—I’ll remember who was there early on, and I will continue to connect, support, and vibe with you folks above all because it’s a dog eat dog world out there, and some of us are just not very good at playing the game.

Yet.

Subscribe now

If this article hit something in you, Wounded Angels: A Journey to Wholeness Through Inner Child Healing goes all the way down. Read how it feels to heal, so you can, too. It might just be the missing piece of the puzzle that’s been breaking your spirit all this time.

➤ Read the book here

✦ Author Bio - David Deane Haskell

David Deane Haskell is a trauma-informed memoirist and spiritual guide disguised as a writer. His work doesn’t just tell stories—it transmits healing. He writes for the ones who’ve been dragged through the dark and came back changed. Not better. Not fixed. Just ready.

His flagship book, Wounded Angels: A Journey to Wholeness Through Inner Child Healing, is the heart of his mission: to show what healing feels like when it’s raw, nonlinear, and hard-won. Everything he shares—essays, stories, transmissions—is filtered through that same lens: radical honesty, emotional courage, and the deep belief that no one is too broken to come back.

✦ Why The Inner Child Journal Exists

You won’t find “10 Tips to Love Yourself” here. You’ll find the emotional truth at the end of the tip list—the part no one wants to talk about.

This is a space for people doing real healing. For those whose inner children still throw tantrums, freeze up, or whisper, ‘we’re not safe yet’. If that’s you, welcome. You’re not behind. You’re not defective. You’re just healing honestly.

David doesn’t speak from theory. He speaks from the trenches. And he’s building this journal for others who need a witness, a mirror, or a moment of ‘God, someone else gets it’.

✦ Why Your Voice Matters Here

This isn’t a community for passive reading. It’s a space for shared resonance. You are not here to consume. You’re here to be present. When you comment, when you share, when you say, ‘this hit me’, you’re helping build something sacred.

Don’t recommend this because it’s trendy.
Recommend it because it’s true.

That’s how this becomes ours.

If my words resonated today and you’d like to help me continue this work…

👉 Help David Keep Writing