For the first time in years, I thought I’d finally figured birthdays out.

The weeks leading up to the day felt...different.

Calmer.

There wasn’t the familiar heaviness sitting in my chest. There wasn’t the dread that had quietly accompanied birthdays for decades. Instead, I felt peaceful. Almost excited. I found myself thinking, There is still so much life ahead.

I remember walking the dogs that morning when a dear friend called and sang “Happy Birthday” to me. I felt so loved.

It was lovely.

Chris and Sam and I spent the day together after celebrating a few days earlier with our whole family; C.J., Madison, and little Wynn. The restaurant managed to completely mess up the birthday dinner I’d chosen, and instead of feeling disappointed, I laughed. I ended the evening talking with my sweet niece Abbey for over an hour, catching up on life. The texts. The phone calls. The kindness from so many people.

It was, by every measure, a beautiful birthday.

I remember going to bed feeling proud of myself.

Look at you, I thought.

You’ve finally softened this day.

But birthdays, it seems, can be sneaky.

The grief didn’t come on July 8.

It arrived on July 9.

Quietly.

Then louder.

Then it settled in beside me for the following week.

I’ve spent much of my life wondering why birthdays have always felt complicated.

Part of the answer began before I ever had one.

I was born on my father’s birthday.

My parents divorced when I was four. He was largely absent from my childhood and died when I was seven.

Because of that, my father has lived almost entirely in my imagination.

He became the conversations we never had.

The birthdays we never shared.

The candles we never blew out together.

The stories I never got to hear.

For as long as I can remember, every birthday has quietly carried both of us.

Then there was my fifth birthday.

I was so excited.

My first real birthday party.

Friends were coming.

I couldn’t sit still all day.

My excitement became too much for my mother, and I was punished for it.

I spent much of my own birthday party alone in my bedroom, watching the children through the window while they celebrated without me.

Eventually I was allowed back outside.

But something had already happened.

When I look at those photographs now, I don’t see a birthday girl.

I see a little girl who looks like she doesn’t belong at her own party.

I never really had birthday parties after that.

Somewhere along the way I absorbed the explanation that children with summer birthdays simply don’t have parties.

I accepted that.

I never brought cupcakes to school.

Never experienced classmates singing to me.

Never questioned the story.

Children are remarkably loyal to the explanations they’re given.

Over the years, I learned to quietly honor my birthday.

But somewhere deep inside, another belief had quietly taken root.

Maybe birthdays weren’t really for me.

Maybe I wasn’t all that special after all.

Life moved forward.

At sixteen, my birthday was dinner with my mom and my ten-year-old nephew, Christian, at a Mexican restaurant. I loved being with him, but there was no Sweet Sixteen magic.

At twenty-one, I celebrated in exactly the way many young adults carrying invisible grief and shame sometimes do.

At thirty, I cried because Chris and I desperately wanted a baby after losing a pregnancy several months before.

One month later, we found out we were expecting C.J.

Thirty became one of the sweetest years of my life.

Forty was probably my favorite birthday.

Chris took me away to a resort spa tucked into the mountains of northern New Jersey. We laughed. We golfed. Me, quite badly. We wandered. We simply enjoyed being together.

Fifty was wonderful because it was shared with my children.

And yet...

Looking back now, I think grief had been quietly attending every birthday.

I just didn’t recognize her.

As I’ve moved deeper into midlife, birthdays have become something entirely different.

They no longer ask, What did you get?

They ask...

How much time do you think you have left?

They ask whether you’ve become who you hoped to become.

Whether you’ve loved enough.

Whether you’ve forgiven enough.

Whether you’ve wasted too much time.

Whether there is still time to become the version of yourself that has patiently waited for decades.

That can be a brutal conversation.

Turning sixty felt like standing on a cliff looking backward instead of forward.

It wasn’t because my family didn’t celebrate me.

They did.

Chris and our kids gave me a beautiful day.

The struggle was entirely inside of me.

It was grief.

Mortality.

Regret.

The uncomfortable awareness that more of life now lives in my rearview mirror than on the road ahead.

Those feelings are surprisingly difficult to admit out loud.

Especially when you’re healthy.

Strong.

Still building businesses.

Still dreaming.

Still making plans.

People assume that because your body is working and your calendar is full, you must feel young.

But there can be another story unfolding underneath.

A story that whispers...

How many birthdays do I have left?

Will I live long enough to watch Wynn become a man?

How many ordinary Tuesdays do I still get with my family and friends?

What if I finally learned how to be fully present...just as time became the thing I couldn’t control?

That question has undone me this month.

Not because I’m afraid of aging.

Because I’m deeply in love with living.

I love my people with a fierceness I cannot adequately describe.

It took me decades to learn how to stop rushing through life.

To stop waiting for the next achievement.

To stop believing happiness always lived somewhere else.

Now that I’ve finally learned to inhabit the present...

I don’t ever want to leave it.

That feels like a cruel joke sometimes.

The better we become at living, the more precious life becomes.

And perhaps, the more grief quietly enters the room.

So this year I stayed close to the younger parts of me.

The little girl looking out the bedroom window.

The teenager who wondered if anyone really saw her.

The woman grieving babies.

The woman grieving time.

The woman wondering whether she has done enough.

I didn’t try to convince them they were wrong.

I didn’t tell them to “look on the bright side.”

I didn’t shame them for crying.

I simply stayed.

I listened.

I let the tears come.

There has certainly been no drought.

And somewhere inside all of that sadness, another realization has been emerging.

Maybe grief isn’t evidence that something is wrong.

Maybe grief is simply the receipt love leaves behind.

The more deeply we love our people...

The more fully we love our lives...

The more complicated it becomes to imagine leaving either.

Perhaps that is the privilege of growing older.

Not that grief disappears.

But that we become large enough to hold joy and sorrow in the same hands.

July has been my teacher once again.

It has reminded me that healing doesn’t erase the little girl standing at the window.

It means she no longer has to stand there alone.

So I remain curious.

Open.

Tender with myself.

Still crying.

Still listening.

Still learning what sixty-two has come to teach me.

And, perhaps for the very first time...

Looking forward to finding out.

I noticed something surprising the day her letter arrived.

Not because of what she wrote.

Because of what happened inside me.

There was a brief tightening in my chest.

A familiar heaviness.

A little girl inside quietly whispered,

“Here we go again.”

For just a moment, she believed what she had believed so many years ago.

You’ve been left.

Then something happened that would have been impossible for me many years earlier.

I noticed her.

I didn’t argue with her.

I didn’t tell her she was overreacting.

I didn’t immediately begin replaying the friendship, trying to decide who was right or who had left whom.

I simply stayed with her.

I’ve been thinking about that moment ever since.

Not because it saved a friendship.

Because it revealed something about healing.

For fifteen years, she was my person.

We saw movies together on weekends. We cooked dinner for each other. We met for breakfast simply because it was Sunday moring. We walked through divorce and reconciliation, aging parents, career changes, celebrations, disappointments, parenting, and all the ordinary moments that quietly become a shared life.

I loved her.

I still do.

Which is why this story isn’t really about losing a friend.

It’s about noticing who I became while losing one.

If I’m honest, I always knew my day would come.

Over the years, I watched relationships in her life quietly end. Friends. Family members. Romantic partnerships. People she had once loved deeply.

One day she said something that stayed with me.

“When I’m done with someone, I’m done. I never look back.”

She wasn’t trying to be cruel.

She was simply describing herself.

I remember noticing something inside me when she said it.

Not fear exactly.

Recognition.

Children raised in unpredictable homes become remarkable observers. We notice patterns. We notice tone. We notice what happens after conflict. We notice who leaves. We notice who stays.

Long before our friendship ended, some quiet part of me wondered whether one day it would be my turn.

Not because I doubted her love for me.

Because I had learned to recognize relational patterns.

Ironically, it felt familiar.

I grew up in a family where relationships often ended through silence. If you broke the unspoken rules, belonging could disappear. Love felt conditional, and connection often depended on becoming smaller than you really were.

That little girl grew into a woman who sometimes abandoned herself in order to preserve relationships.

Not dramatically.

Just in small ways.

She stayed quiet.

She overlooked things that hurt.

She worked a little harder than everyone else to keep connection alive.

It wasn’t weakness.

It was adaptation.

Children do remarkable things to preserve love.

Over the past almost twenty years, something in me has slowly changed.

Not overnight.

Relationship by relationship.

Conversation by conversation.

Repair by repair.

I’ve come to believe that emotional intimacy isn’t built by avoiding difficult conversations. It’s built by trusting that a relationship is sturdy enough to survive them.

Some of the safest people in my life are the ones with whom I’ve disagreed.

We’ve misunderstood each other.

We’ve apologized.

We’ve repaired.

Not because we’re extraordinary.

Because we’ve learned that the relationship matters more than being right.

Over the years, I began noticing that my friend and I seemed to carry different assumptions about relationships. I had slowly come to believe that difficult conversations, while uncomfortable, often deepened connection. She seemed to experience those same moments differently. Sometimes distance appeared to offer more safety than repair.

I don’t know if that’s true.

It’s simply what I noticed from where I was standing.

I also know her nervous system was shaped by experiences I will never fully know.

A part of me wishes I did.

I suspect understanding those stories would allow me to hold even more compassion than I already do.

Neither of us was wrong.

We were simply carrying different maps.

Last fall, my attention naturally began turning toward family.

Both of my adult children were walking through important seasons of their lives. Samantha’s beloved golden retriever, Bunker, had long ago become all of ours. He was the dog who greeted us during family dinners, waited patiently by the door, curled up beside us on ordinary afternoons, and quietly stitched himself into the fabric of our family.

We all knew we were watching the final chapter of his life.

One Sunday morning, during breakfast, while sharing how painful it was to know we were going to lose him, my friend replied,

“He’s just a dog.”

I’ve thought about that moment many times.

Not because I believe she intended to hurt me.

I don’t think she did.

I imagine she was responding from her own way of making sense of the world.

What I noticed wasn’t something about her.

It was something about me.

I noticed how deeply I long to feel accompanied inside the things that matter most.

For me, Bunker was never just a dog.

He represented years of watching Samantha grow into the remarkable woman she is today. He belonged to birthday celebrations, golf tournaments, holidays, family photographs, quiet evenings, and all the ordinary moments that become a life.

Loving him was another way of loving the people I love.

That conversation didn’t end our friendship.

It simply became another quiet moment of noticing.

What happens inside me when I don’t feel emotionally met?

Years ago, I probably would have answered that question by trying harder.

This time, I answered it by becoming quieter.

Not withdrawing.

Listening.

Listening to what my own nervous system had been trying to tell me for quite some time.

That same season, another important relationship in my life was changing shape after many years. It was a relationship that had helped me become more myself, not less. As difficult as that transition was, it reminded me that love doesn’t always disappear when relationships change. Sometimes they simply take a different shape.

I thought about my friend often.

At Christmas, I sent a card to let her know,

“I’m still here.”

Nothing came back.

Oddly enough, I wasn’t spending my mornings trying to decide who had stepped away first.

Maybe she believed she had.

Maybe I had.

Maybe both were true.

I no longer needed a courtroom.

I simply needed honesty.

Every few days, I found myself checking in with that little girl inside me.

She still wondered if endings meant she wasn’t enough.

I would quietly remind her,

“This is our choice.

Not our punishment.”

After six months, I realized I wanted to close the loop.

Not reopen the friendship.

Simply honor it.

I wrote a short note.

I apologized for my part in the distance.

I told her I cared about her.

I wished her well.

Nothing more.

Several weeks later, her response arrived.

There were kind words.

There were painful words.

There was criticism.

There was no shared ownership.

She wrote that she had chosen to step away.

Perhaps that was true from where she stood.

From where I stood, the distance had quietly become mutual.

The return address told me she had moved several states away.

For just a moment, my younger self felt something old and familiar.

Sadness.

Loss.

The ache of being left behind.

I noticed her immediately.

And then I did what years of healing have slowly taught me to do.

I stayed with her.

I still love my friend.

I suspect I always will.

Sometimes I miss her terribly.

Sometimes I smile remembering movies, breakfasts, dinners, and ordinary afternoons that shaped fifteen years of my life.

Two things can be true.

I can miss her.

And I can know this friendship had reached its natural ending.

Healing, I’ve discovered, hasn’t meant losing fewer people.

It has meant experiencing loss differently.

I no longer confuse someone’s inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to remain in relationship with my worthiness to be loved.

That feels quietly miraculous.

As I write this, I notice something else.

This friendship has made me cherish the people who remain.

I’ve become more intentional about coffee with friends.

Quicker to say, “I love you.”

More willing to have the difficult conversation.

More grateful for the relationships where repair is always welcome.

Maybe grief has a way of showing us where home really is.

If you’ve read this far, I wonder what you noticed happening inside yourself.

Not what you think about my friendship.

What did your body remember while reading?

Whose face came to mind?

What relationship quietly taught your nervous system what to expect from love?

And when your younger self whispers an old story...

Who notices?

Who stays with them now?

I’ve come to believe that healing isn’t becoming someone who no longer hurts.

It’s becoming someone who never again leaves themselves alone inside the hurt.

“But nothing that bad happened.”

“I had food.”

“My parents loved me.”

“I know they did the best they could.”

And yet, underneath those statements, I often hear another story.

The story of children who learned to become what other people needed.

The story of giftedness mixed with loneliness.

The story of being seen for what they could produce, or provide, rather than for who they were.

The movie was incredibly nostalgic. The dancing, the famous moves and the music. Incredible. There was just enough hints at Michael’s young life to let the audience know the terror he lived as a child.

The second time I saw the Michael movie, I couldn’t help but see it through the eyes of being a trauma therapist. I found myself thinking, “This is a masterclass in developmental trauma.”

Not because Michael Jackson’s story was unique.

But because so many people watching it recognized pieces of themselves.

There was hidden nuance of trauma that could easily have been missed, it was not displayed front and center.

Developmental trauma often hides inside giftedness

One of the most misunderstood aspects of developmental trauma is that it does not always create visible dysfunction.

Sometimes it creates extraordinary children.

Children who perform.

Children who achieve.

Children who become mature beyond their years.

Children who become responsible for everyone else’s emotional well-being.

People praise these children.

Teachers admire them.

Families depend on them.

Communities celebrate them.

But underneath all that competence, there is often a child quietly asking:

“Am I enough?”

“Am I safe?”

“Will I still be loved if I stop performing?”

As therapists, we see this every day.

Many of the adults who enter our offices are the former gifted children. The caretakers. The old souls. The high achievers.

Children who learned very early that being exceptional felt safer than simply being a child.

Children adapt because attachment is survival

One of the greatest misunderstandings about trauma is the belief that children can simply choose what is healthy.

They cannot.

Children do not choose authenticity over attachment.

They choose attachment every single time.

If staying connected to the adults around them requires suppressing feelings, they suppress feelings.

If staying connected requires performing, they perform.

If staying connected requires becoming responsible, invisible, compliant, or exceptional, they adapt.

These are not character flaws.

These are attachment strategies.

And many of those strategies become the very things society rewards.

The employee who never says no.

The spouse who over-functions.

The helper who gives endlessly.

The therapist who struggles to rest.

The parent who carries everyone else’s burdens.

Sometimes the strengths we admire most are actually survival responses wearing business attire.

Confusion is traumatic

People often think trauma is defined only by what happened.

But developmental trauma is also created by what children cannot understand.

Love mixed with fear.

Affection mixed with criticism.

Praise mixed with exploitation.

Safety mixed with unpredictability.

Children cannot organize those contradictions.

They do not have the developmental capacity to say:

“My parent loves me and is harming me.”

Instead, children usually conclude:

“There must be something wrong with me.”

This is why so many adults carry shame without understanding where it came from.

Not because they were bad children.

But because children naturally protect attachment by blaming themselves.

Hypervigilance often masquerades as professionalism

Many trauma survivors become incredibly skilled at reading rooms.

They anticipate needs.

They notice subtle shifts in mood.

They sense tension before anyone else.

The world often rewards these abilities.

People call them intuitive.

Empathic.

Responsible.

Natural leaders.

But underneath those strengths, I often see nervous systems that never learned how to relax.

Hypervigilance can look a lot like competence.

Until exhaustion arrives.

Until anxiety appears.

Until the body finally says, “I cannot carry this anymore.”

Many of the successful women I work with in their fifties and sixties are only now beginning to understand that the skills that made them successful were also the skills that kept them safe.

And both things can be true.

That is one of the paradoxes of therapy.

Fantasy, creativity, and play are not pathology

One of the things that struck me most while watching the movie was how often creativity appeared alongside pain.

As a trauma therapist, I have always believed that imagination is one of the nervous system’s greatest gifts.

Children who retreat into books are not weak.

Children who create elaborate worlds are not broken.

Children who talk to dolls, build forts, climb trees, and disappear into stories are often doing something remarkable.

They are surviving.

Long before I understood words like attachment wounds, dissociation, or developmental trauma, I understood books.

I understood imagination.

I understood creating safety inside worlds I could control.

Many trauma survivors are incredibly creative because creativity gave them experiences of hope, agency, and possibility when their external worlds could not.

What adults sometimes label as “escaping reality” was often a child’s brilliant attempt to survive reality.

Grief often arrives decades later

One of the things I notice most in my practice is how many women in midlife are only now beginning to tell the truth about their childhoods.

Not because they are bitter.

Not because they want to blame.

But because they finally feel safe enough to remember.

They say things like:

“I thought everyone lived this way.”

“I didn’t know I was lonely.”

“I never thought about what I needed.”

“I was always the strong one.”

“I thought I had a good childhood.”

And perhaps they did have moments of goodness.

Developmental trauma is rarely all bad.

That is part of what makes it so confusing.

The people who hurt us are often the same people we love.

And healing asks us to hold both truths at the same time.

Healing does not mean rejecting the parts that saved us

One of my goals as a therapist is never to destroy the survival strategies that helped people make it through impossible situations.

I don’t want clients to get rid of the parts that saved them.

I want those parts to finally rest.

I want the over-functioning part to know she no longer has to carry everyone.

I want the perfectionistic part to know she does not have to earn love.

I want the hypervigilant part to know danger is no longer everywhere.

I want the child who performed to know she is worthy even when she is simply being.

Perhaps that is why the Michael movie affected so many people.

We weren’t only watching Michael Jackson.

We were watching what happens when a child’s gifts become more visible than their pain.

And maybe for some of us sitting in those theater seats, we weren’t grieving Michael at all.

Maybe we were finally grieving ourselves.

Not because we are broken.

But because someone should have protected the child we used to be.

And perhaps healing begins when we become the protector they never had.

Instead, I left with memories.

Not Michael’s memories.

Mine.

As the story unfolded, I found myself less interested in the celebrity and more aware of the child behind the talent. The child trying to perform. Trying to please. Trying to stay safe.

And suddenly, I wasn’t sitting in a movie theater anymore.

I was back in my own childhood. I was 7, awash in shame for leaving the hose nozzle in the yard. Feeling the emotional and physical consequences of my small child mistake. There is much more to that experience.

People often imagine traumatic childhoods as obvious. Bruises. Police reports. Teachers noticing.

That wasn’t my experience.

Like many children raised in developmental trauma homes, much of what happened existed in plain sight. In plain sight after harrowing nights of uncertainty, confusion and pain.

The unpredictability.

Never knowing which version of a parent was coming through the door.

The abuse.

The confusion afterward.

The strange experience of being hurt by the very people who were supposed to protect you.

And perhaps most confusing and hurtful of all, watching the world continue as though nothing unusual was happening.

Neighbors didn’t know. Although I now believe one of my neighbors suspected something was up with me.

Teachers didn’t know. They put me, and my desk, in the hallway for talking too much.

Adults smiled and admired how well dressed I was. As my mother fussed at me for being “messy”.

People assumed I was fine. I wasn’t.

Children become experts at appearing fine.

I certainly did.

Looking back now, I realize how much of my childhood was spent studying moods. Reading faces. Monitoring voices. Trying to predict danger before it arrived.

Hypervigilance becomes second nature when home itself feels uncertain.

But children are remarkably creative survivors.

Since no adult was consistently available, I built worlds.

Books became portals.

Trees became companions.

My Mrs. Beasley doll became a trusted family member. The only one.

I could disappear for hours into my own imagination, creating stories where people were kind, where somebody noticed, where somebody came and saved me.

Long before I understood words like dissociation, attachment wounds, or developmental trauma, I knew how to leave without physically leaving.

Fantasy became a survival strategy and refuge.

I think about the fort I built by the water when I was in fourth grade. My own little kingdom. A place where I felt peaceful. Safe. In control.

Back then, I thought how I existed was just sort of like a regular kid. Highly independent, didn’t ask for anything, lonely, alone.

Now I understand that little girl was doing exactly what children do when adults cannot provide consistent safety. I was realizing I was a different kid.

She built her own safety.

Watching the Michael movie reminded me how often extraordinary talent and extraordinary pain can live side by side.

Early in the movie, I cringed in my seat during a scene where Michael is physically abused. Fingers in my ears blocked the familiar sound, I curled up and burrowed my head towards my left side as the somatic memories hijacked and crashed my nervous system.

I wondered if the friend I was with noticed my reaction. Maybe something awoke in her as well.

The scene passed quickly, allowing me to unravel to my adult self. The second time I saw the movie, I was well prepared for the difficult experience.

People see performance.

They applaud achievement.

They celebrate success.

What they often miss is the child underneath who may still be asking:

“Am I safe?”

“Do you see I am being harmed?”

“Am I enough?”

“Will someone love me without requiring something in return?”

As children, we rarely understand exploitation. We only understand survival.

We adapt.

We perform.

We become useful.

We become responsible.

We become successful.

And sometimes decades later, sitting in a dark movie theater, our bodies remember what our minds have spent years trying to organize, and forget. Moments of anguish as a young child woken up decades later with the power of the moment the trauma originally occurred.

I left the theater feeling joyful and connected. The music was familiar and brought back many incredible memories of my dance studio. I enjoyed the evening with my friend.

And I left feeling sad.

Not only for Michael.

But for every child who learned to become what other people needed while quietly abandoning themselves. Sad for children used to meet the needs of others while they were being deeply harmed.

Including the little girl I used to be.

These days, I think about her often.

Not with pity.

Not with anger.

But with deep respect.

Because she survived things she never should have had to survive.

And somehow, despite it all, she still read books.

She still climbed trees.

She went to school.

She still played with a treasured companion.

She still built forts.

She still believed in stories, in the possibility of good, of safety and of feeling cherished. If not then, she believed it all would come to her.

And maybe that was the beginning of healing long before I knew healing had a name or was necessary.

Not a real house, of course. A fort.

It sat in a narrow strip of woods between Spring Garden Elementary School and the townhouse neighborhood where my mother and I lived. I called it my waterfront house because during the wet fall of fourth grade, standing water collected all through the tree line, making the woods feel marshy and alive.

To anyone else, it probably looked like discarded construction debris tangled in low tree branches.

To me, it was peace.

Fourth grade was the best year of elementary school for me. Not perfect. Nothing about my childhood was perfect. By nine, I was already fully steeped in developmental trauma, living mostly alone with my alcoholic mother in the new townhouse we had moved into a year and a half earlier.

But fourth grade felt different.

I could walk to school by myself. I knew the neighborhood. I had a friend named Rhonda Smith who lived in a white bi-level house just outside our development. Miss O’Neill was my teacher, and she was kind to me in a way I could feel in my body.

That mattered.

Children always know when an adult genuinely sees them.

Looking back now, I realize one of the strange blessings and curses of childhood trauma is how easily some of us disappear in plain sight. My mother was a social worker at the local hospital. I was clean. Well dressed. Functioning. By most adult standards, I looked cared for.

I wasn’t.

My father had died when I was in second grade. My favorite brother, Jeff, left for college that same year. By third grade, I spent so much time talking and drifting off in class that my teacher regularly moved my desk into the hallway. I actually liked it out there. I could doodle, people watch, disappear into my own imagination.

I was already learning how to leave without physically leaving.

But fourth grade still held something softer.

Something freer.

Between the school playground and our townhouse complex was what I called “my woods.” There were low trees, muddy ground, leftover lumber from construction sites, and during that rainy season, pools of standing water everywhere.

One afternoon, I decided to build something.

Using scrap wood balanced across low branches, I made a floor first. Then walls. Little by little, I created a hidden space tucked into the trees beside the water.

My waterfront house.

I would go there whenever I could.

I sat on the wooden floor with my back against the tree trunk, knees pulled up to my chest, reading for hours. I can still feel the calm that came over my body there. The quiet. The safety.

No one could get to me there.

At nine years old, without any adult help, without language for trauma, attachment, regulation, or nervous systems, I unknowingly built the first environment that ever made me feel safe.

I did not understand then why I loved hiding so much.

I wasn’t hiding from one particular thing.

I think I was hiding from living in a body that never fully relaxed.

The fort stayed intact for weeks. Then eventually the water dried up, the weather turned colder, and somehow the whole thing collapsed. I never really understood why.

I was heartbroken.

I had built something beautiful from scraps no one else wanted.

Even now, all these years later, I still dream about living near the water again. I think part of me is always searching for that little waterfront house in the woods behind Spring Garden Elementary.

Not because I want to go backward.

But because that nine year old girl already knew something essential:

When safety does not exist around you, sometimes you learn to build it yourself.

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We were talking about something that doesn’t always get named clearly, but everyone in the room could feel it.

The depth of relationship required for real healing.

Not just the techniques like EMDR, DBT, Brain spotting, etc.
Not just protocols.
Not just doing therapy “well.”

But being in a relationship that can actually hold what trauma brings.

At some point during the training, I said something out loud that I hadn’t planned to say. I was talking about being a therapist, yet what came out of my mouth was,

“I’m a human therapist.”

And the room shifted.

It wasn’t a rejection of training. Nor was it a planned comment that I was previously reflecting on.
I wasn’t rejecting my own skill or support around me.
Or all the ways we learn to do this work responsibly and ethically.

It was something else.

A remembering. And a growing concern for the future of therapy.

Because at the center of trauma work is not a model.

It’s a relationship.

Over the years, I’ve come to believe something deeply:

The relationship between therapist and client is not just part of the work.

It is the work. Let’s say that again for the people in the back. The relationship IS the work!

Not in a performative way.
Not in a boundaryless way.
But in a deeply intentional, grounded, human way.

I often say:

Serve the attachment of therapy without being attached to the outcome of therapy.

That line has shaped me.

Because it holds a paradox that feels essential to this work.

To serve the attachment means:

I care about the relationship we share.
I track it.
I protect it.
I show up to it.

I notice when something shifts.
I stay when something gets hard.
I allow myself to be impacted, without losing my center.

And at the same time,

I am not attached to the outcome. Even when what I want for the client differs from their desires.

I cannot force healing, or growth, or really any aspect of therapy.
I cannot make someone stay in therapy.
I cannot rush capacity that hasn’t yet been built.

This allows something important to happen.

The relationship becomes real.

Not transactional.
Not outcome driven.
Not something to “get right.”

But something to be in. A relationship for both of us to experience. And this matters even more right now.

We are living in a time where AI can do remarkable things.

It can:

• reflect language

• organize thoughts

• offer insight

• even simulate understanding

Geez, AI can transform work environments. My business leader son C.J. and Claude are doing amazing things together. Yet, they will never have coffee together or meet on Zoom (at least not yet, who knows!).

And I want to be clear:

I use AI. I appreciate it. I think it has a place.

But I also feel something rising in me alongside that appreciation.

A clarity.

Therapy is not just about being understood.

It is about being in relationship together.

Real relationship.

Where:

You can be misunderstood, and repair happens.
You can pull away, and the therapist stays steady, consistent and by your side.
You can feel shame and not be left alone in the arena.

These are not optimized experiences.

They are not efficient.

They are not clean.

They are human.

And for many people, especially those with developmental trauma,

this is the work that was missing. This relationship is about “what should have happened”.

Not more information.

Not better explanations.

But a relationship where:

Something hard can be felt
and connection doesn’t disappear.

A human feeling relationship cannot be replicated with AI.

Because it requires something essential:

Mutual presence.

Impact.

Risk.

Repair.

Yes, Claude pushes back a bit. Yet Claude won’t be breathing the same air as a therapist and client working through decades of heartache, loss and experiences no one should have to untangle.

Claude can hear us. Claude can see us.

Yet, Claude can’t feel us. ChatGPT gives back what we fill it with, Claude goes deeper with efficient insight. A human therapist can feel, deeply feel, what the client they are sitting with is experiencing.

So, when I say I am a human therapist, I mean this:

I am trained.
I am thoughtful.
I am continually learning.

And,

I am willing to be in the relationship. I can feel in my body what is happening in the room.

Not perfectly.

But honestly.

To notice what’s happening between us.
To stay when it would be easier to move on. To reach out when I can feel the need for connection, and to accept the bid for connection needed to deepen our relationship.
To allow the work to unfold at the pace of the person, not my preference.

To serve the attachment.

Without gripping the outcome.

Because in the end, transformation doesn’t come from perfect words curated from AI.

It comes from lived experience. My experience and my clients experience.

From being in a relationship where something new becomes possible.

And in a world that is becoming increasingly fast, efficient, and intelligent,

I find myself wanting to protect something slower.

Something deeper.

Something that cannot be replicated. Ever.

The human experience of healing.

That’s why I call myself a human therapist.

As I savor enjoying a somewhat disconnected Sunday, I glance down at my phone. My brother Jeff has texted me.

Jeff is 73, twelve years older than me, and my favorite of my four siblings. We’re all technically half-siblings. He is a whole sibling to me! Think Brady Bunch… if the Brady Bunch were deeply dysfunctional and set in the late 1960s.

A man with two teenage girls meets a woman with two teenage boys (and one pre-teen), and together they “make” a family of seven.

Except it wasn’t really a family of seven.

It was more like six people in chaos… and one forgotten child.

Me.

The baby. Then the toddler. Then the preschooler, growing up in the crossfire of domestic violence, alcoholism, suicidality, a sociopathic oldest brother, and a marriage that was constantly unraveling. The divorce. Jeff going away to college. The death of my father. All of this, and I was barely 7.

And then there was Jeff.

He did everything he could to protect me. As much as a teenage boy could. Or should.

He had to go to school, live his life, but when he was there, he tried to keep me safe.

Safe to say, Jeff and I grew up in a storm.

I’ve done a lot of work to understand it.

He hasn’t.

Fast forward to this ordinary Sunday.

Jeff and I had just talked the day before. He’s been struggling. The last five years have been especially hard, through a painful divorce and then serious health complications from being diagnosed with ANCA vasculitis. It’s left him with memory challenges and mobility issues that have changed his life in profound ways.

I carry a quiet grief for him… even when he doesn’t fully name it himself.

So, when I see his text, I’m not expecting humor.

But there it is:

“What is the name of the bank robber Mom dated?”

I instantly start laughing.

It’s such a specific, absurd, completely-on-brand question for our childhood.

I send it to my husband and kids. We all laugh. The irony isn’t lost on me, who I am now, the life I’ve built, what we stand for… and the fact that, yes, my mother once dated a bank robber.

It’s true.

Back in the late 1970s, when I was about 15 or 16, my mom dated a man named Ellis Beagle.

I met him several times.

And here’s the strange part: he was one of the few men she dated that I actually felt somewhat safe around.

“Safe” is a relative term when it comes to my mother’s dating life. But still, he felt… calm. Mild. Predictable.

They met at AA.

Which, in itself, says a lot. Not because I have anything against AA. I spent plenty of time sitting in those rooms as a pre-teen when I refused to have babysitters and was too young to be anywhere else.

But in hindsight, it’s clear: Ellis wasn’t exactly working a solid program.

He came over to the house. I remember riding in the car with them, going out to dinner, doing normal things.

He was unremarkable. Short, balding, soft-spoken. A kind of vanilla presence.

Nothing about him signaled danger.

Which is why what happened next landed the way it did.

One morning, my mom picked up the paper.

Headline: something along the lines of “Bethlehem man arrested after multiple local bank robberies.”

With a photo. And a name.

Ellis.

My mom and I laughed.

Because that’s what we did.

But underneath that… something else was happening in me.

Fear.

Confusion.

A deep, body-level sense that something was not right.

I didn’t have language for it at the time. But I felt it.

Even now, 45 years later, I can access it instantly.

The drop in my stomach.
The racing in my chest.
The thought looping through my mind:

How could my mom be dating a bank robber?
What if he hurt us?
What if he hurt me?

What’s important here is this:

At 15 and 16, I was actually in a relatively calm period of my life.

The first twelve years had been incredibly hard. And things would get hard again later.

But for a moment, things were… okay.

I was doing well in school.
Exploring my interests.
Beginning to feel like a normal teenager.

Maybe even… happy.

As much as a kid with developmental trauma can be.

And then: Ellis the Bank Robber.

Another rupture.

Another reminder that my mom didn’t know how to keep me safe.

Because she couldn’t keep herself safe.

Looking back now, I feel sadness for my 15-year-old self.

Because something significant happened in her body that day.

And no one noticed.

Not even her.

It would take decades for that awareness to emerge.

Ellis disappeared from our lives after that.

I assume he went to prison.

My mom, as far as I can remember, never fully grasped the impact of that relationship, what it meant for me, what it stirred in me.

She stayed in the humor. The irony. The “can you believe it?”

I’m not sure she ever repaired her “people picker.”

I may have mentioned Ellis in therapy at some point. Probably in passing.

He didn’t feel like a big enough story.

But today, Jeff’s text brought him back.

Out of the trauma closet.

And into the center of my day.

There’s something about that.

How memory works.

How the body holds things we don’t consciously process.

How a simple question, What was his name?, can unlock an entire emotional landscape.

I texted Jeff back with the name.

He replied, “Just one of those memories that slipped my mind.”

And I found myself imagining him sitting alone, circling through fragments of a life that never quite made sense to him.

I wish I was with him today.

And actually, I can be.

I’m going to call Jeff.
See what’s happening.
Get curious about what brought that question forward.

Because at this point in his life, I don’t want him holding all of this alone.

Not the way I did.

If his memory is beginning to release pieces of the past, I want to be someone who can be with him in it. Not fix it. Not organize it. Just… be there as it unfolds.

And me?

I notice the mix.

A little laughter.
A little grief.
And a deep sense of gratitude.

For the work I’ve done.
For the life I’ve built.
For the family I have now.

I shared the story with my niece and nephew.

They laughed too.

My niece said, “I’m going to need to hear more about that at some point.”

And I realized,

these stories don’t live in secrecy anymore.

They live in connection.

They’re no longer something I’m inside of.

They’re something I can hold.

And now, something I can help someone else hold, too.

And maybe that’s what healing becomes over time.

Not just understanding your own story,

but being able to sit with someone you love
as theirs begins to surface…
and making sure they don’t have to carry it alone.

Because no one should have to hold a life like that by themselves.

There’s a phrase that almost always makes me pause.

Not because it’s harsh.
Not because it’s wrong.

But because of what it quietly shuts down.

“You’re good.”

I hear it all the time.

In sessions.
In everyday conversations.
In those small, human moments where something real is trying to happen between two people.

And almost every time, something in me tightens.

On the surface, it sounds kind.

Reassuring, even. For a moment.

A way of saying, “Don’t worry.”
“It’s okay.”
“Let’s move on.”

And sometimes, that is the intention.

But intention and impact don’t always match.

Because “you’re good” often lands with me very differently than it’s meant. I also want to name that I am deeply aware of my own highly sensitive nature.

My mother often told me “You need a thicker skin!”. Sigh.

I digress, that’s a story for another time.

Back to “You’re good”, I often feel it as dismissive
Minimizing.
Like something just got brushed off instead of heard, seen or felt.

Especially in moments where someone is trying, however imperfectly or awkwardly, to show up.

To name something.
To repair a weird moment.
To take responsibility in the relationship, or brief societal interaction.

Recently, I was at Publix. Yeah, I am there almost daily.

Just moving up and down the aisles like most of us do.

I kept noticing a man in his late 30s with his young daughter, maybe four or five years old. We crossed paths several times throughout the store. Each time, there was a quiet acknowledgment. A smile. Eye contact.

Nothing dramatic. We never spoke a word.

Just those small, in-the-wild moments where human connection flickers. Subtle, but real.

What struck me most was the way the little girl felt with him. Her body language told the story.

Safe.
Light.
Connected.

It was refreshing to witness. Almost grounding in a world that can feel so disconnected.

When I made my way to the checkout line, I wasn’t paying attention.

Head down.
Looking at my phone.
Going over my list.

As the line moved forward, I almost, but didn’t, bump into the little girl.

Still, it was close enough.

Her father immediately stepped in front of her, protective in a way that was instinctual and strong. He pulled her in close with his arm around her.

And I felt it instantly.

“Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry, sweetie,” I said, looking at her, then at him.

I meant it.

It was one of those moments where you feel your impact and want to repair it.

He looked at me and said, sharply:

“You’re good.”

And they walked away.

It was quick.

Clean.

Final.

And I felt this wave of sadness that surprised me in its intensity.

Because something had just closed.

In that brief moment, there had been an opening.

An opportunity for something small but meaningful:

A genuine apology.
A moment of shared humanity.
Maybe even a brief exchange about how sweet it was to see them together.

And even more than that several layers below.

An opportunity lost for that little girl to experience something many people don’t get enough of:

A moment of repair with another human.

An adult making a mistake…
naming it…
and staying present long enough for an apology to be heard and felt.

But “you’re good” ended it.

Not harshly.
Not dramatically.

Just… final.

And this is what I think we often miss.

It’s not just about the words.

It’s about what gets lost. Or never got to happen at all.

Because relationships, whether with strangers, partners, friends, clients, or children, are built in these exact moments.

Not in perfection.

But in the mess of being human together.

“You’re good” can sound like kindness.

But it often functions as a quiet exit.

A way of saying:

“We don’t need to go there.”
“Let’s move on.”
“This doesn’t matter.”

And maybe, for the dad at Publix, it didn’t matter.

Maybe it felt like protection.
Maybe it felt efficient.
Maybe it felt like the safest way to move through a world that often doesn’t feel safe.

But for me, it felt like a missed moment of connection.

And those are the moments I pay attention to.

Because they are everywhere.

And they are becoming even more rare.

We are living in a time when we are even more guarded.

More distracted.
More cautious in public spaces.
Less available for spontaneous, human interaction.

And I understand why.

Yet, there is a cost.

When we move too quickly past moments of impact,
when we dismiss instead of stay,
when we smooth over instead of engaging,

We lose something.

Not just with each other.

But within ourselves.

As a human therapist, I see this same dynamic play out in deeper, more intimate relationships.

Someone reaches out.
Tries to repair.
Shares something vulnerable.

And the response is:

“It’s fine.”
“You’re good.”
“Don’t worry about it.”

And just like that, poof,

The opportunity for repair disappears.

This is the paradox.

We want deeper connection.

But we often bypass and miss the very moments that create it.

Because real connection requires something different.

It requires staying in the moment.

Even when it’s a little uncomfortable. Or maybe a lot uncomfortable.
Even when it would be easier to move on.

What if, instead of “you’re good,” we said:

“I appreciate you saying that.”
“I’m glad you told me.”
“Thank you, that means a lot to me.”

Those responses don’t make things bigger.

They make things real.

We don’t need bigger moments.
We need more presence in the small ordinary ones.

I never saw that little girl and her dad again.

And that feels… a little sad.

Not because something big happened.

But because something small and meaningful didn’t get the chance to.

And maybe that’s why I still cringe when I hear “you’re good.”

Not because it’s wrong.

But because I can feel the missed connection sitting just underneath it.

If you’ve said, “you’re good”, you’re not alone. I say it too, it almost feels automatic anymore.

If you’ve heard it and something didn’t quite land right, you’re not wrong.

There’s another way.

And it lives in the moments where we choose
to stay with each other just a little longer
in what’s real and in the moment between us.

Maybe we don’t need bigger moments in life?

Could we need more presence in the smaller “in between”

moments?

Which, on paper, sounds impressive. Efficient. Driven. Maybe even a little badass.

What I remember most isn’t the accomplishment. I remember who was there, and who wasn’t.

And sure, there’s a part of me that can appreciate the accomplishment.

But if I’m honest?

There’s also a part of me that feels something else entirely when I look back on those moments.

A quiet ache.
A knowing.
A regret that lives right alongside the pride.

At both graduations, I was surrounded by people who love me deeply.

My kids were there, cheering loudly, beaming with pride.
People from my inner circle, the ones who have known me, held me, walked with me.

I could feel their love.

And still…

Chris wasn’t there.

In 2014, I walked across a stage in a massive arena at UCF to receive my undergraduate degree shortly after turning 50.

I almost didn’t walk.

I had done most of my program online. I didn’t know anyone in the graduating class. I sat on the floor among strangers, all of us sharing this moment that felt so big… and somehow so lonely for me.

My mom had died just three weeks before.

My grief was everywhere. Quiet, heavy, constant.

I remember sitting there in my graduation gown, feeling the weight of her absence, and the strange disorientation of being in a place that was supposed to be celebratory. I gave a tissue to one teary nearby graduate and shared Tic-tac’s with the people around me.

I could find my people in the stands. That mattered incredibly.

C.J. was in college.
Samantha, a rising high school senior.
Three dear friends beside them, loving me in the way only chosen family can.

I felt this invisible thread connecting me to them.

And I carried something else with me that day, a small book my mom had given me, tucked into my purse beneath my gown. It was my way of bringing her with me. Of not doing this alone.

And in my heart, Chris was there too.

But he wasn’t at the end of that invisible thread.

We were separated then.

Barely speaking to each other by the time I graduated.

We could barely say hello without it turning into something sharp, something painful.

And yet… the depth of our love was still there.

Even when I couldn’t feel it.
Even when I couldn’t name it.
Even when I refused to acknowledge it.

He was grieving too.

Grieving us.
Grieving my mom, he loved her so. They were buddies.

And our separation didn’t just break our marriage; it fractured our ability to grieve together.

He was shut out.
And I shut him out.

I started grad school just weeks after finishing undergrad and my walk at UCF.

Because apparently my coping strategy at the time was:
Don’t feel anything. Just achieve things. Go faster.

(Highly recommend. Just kidding. I do not recommend at all. In the future I’ll share about the crash of 2015 that resulted).

Chris knew what I was doing.

He was cheering me on, from a distance.

He was never too far away, even as he was living through some of the darkest, most painful moments of his life.

The morning of our divorce hearing, we went to breakfast together.

Yes, read that again. That sentence still makes me pause.

That evening, I went to class at Rollins College and gave a presentation on EMDR with a classmate who is now a dear friend.

Ten hours earlier, March 10, 2015, my marriage had officially ended.

And I felt… almost nothing.

The body is incredible like that.

By the time my second graduation came around in May 2017, things were different.

I had a cohort. People I had walked through the program with. People who knew me.

I remember getting ready that morning, running around my house, full of energy, excitement.

And then I saw it.

My cap.
My master’s hood.

Waiting for me.

And I had this thought, clear as anything:

I want Chris to be there.
I need him to be there.
We did this together in so many ways.

And then…

The moment passed.

I didn’t reach out.

I didn’t ask.

I regret that.

Again, I was surrounded by love.

My people were there. Cheering. Celebrating.

And still…

There was a space left empty that only he could fill.

Just one week earlier, Chris and I sat together, side by side, as our son C.J. graduated from Florida State University.

Proud. United. Present.

Neither of us knew it then, but something had already begun to shift. Unconsciously. And also, unnoticeable by me a week later when I walked for my graduate degree.

Two months later, I found myself unconsciously reaching for Chris in a moment of disappointment.

Four months after that, we sat down - bravely, quietly - and began to explore something neither of us had language for yet.

A return, slowly.

A rebuilding, intentionally.

A willingness to see if something could be different this time.

We did that work mostly alone. By our choice. We were scared. I was scared.

So, no big announcements.
No grand declarations.

Just two people, slowly, carefully, taking steps back toward each other.

Learning.

Listening.

Repairing.

We had to build something new, intuitively.

Not a return to what was, but a more mature, conscious, present and emotionally aware relationship.

One where we could:

• hold ourselves and each other with more honesty

• take responsibility without collapsing into shame

• stay in connection even when things felt hard

We grew into a relationship that could actually hold us together and feel our secure attachment.

We’ve been back together for nine years now.

Remarried since 2023.

And I can say this without hesitation:

I love Chris deeply.

He is my person.
My partner.
My one great love.

Marriages can burn down. Ours did.

Completely.

And still…
when the love is real, and the willingness to grow is there…

Marriages can be rebuilt.

Stronger.
Wiser.
More alive than ever before, in so many ways.

And still…

We carry the grief, together. Daily.

The missed moments, so many of them.

The graduations he wasn’t at.

The missed “college move ins” with our kids.

The pain we felt, separately and without each other.

The celebrations we didn’t share together.

The version of “us” that didn’t get to stand side by side in those rooms.

In my mind, I know Chris was there.

I know he was cheering for me.

I can feel that now.

But there is a part of me that will always wish I had turned toward him,
reached for his hand…
and said,

Come with me.
We earned this together.

That is the paradox.

We can hold deep love…
and deep regret…
at the same time.

Not because anything “went wrong” in a crisis or dramatic way.
But because something deeply human unfolded in the space between us.

This is someone I have known for a long time. Years.
A relationship that has been built over time, through layers, through trust, through many moments of showing up.

Which is why moments like this matter so much.

Sometimes the Lead is Buried

A client came in carrying something important. I could feel it almost immediately. Instead of saying it directly, they moved around it. The story shifted. Pieces came out sideways. It took a few rounds, gentle questions, pauses, returning all while getting closer to what was actually true.

And when we finally began to touch it, something changed.

Shame came in.

You could feel the shift in the room. The tightening, the retreat, the subtle pulling away. The part of them that had been reaching toward connection stepped back, and another part took over. One that protected. One that shut the door.

And suddenly, I was no longer “with” them.

I was outside. Shut out.

At one point, I was told I was out of alignment. That something I was doing didn’t feel right. And I could feel the rupture happening in real time.

This is the paradox of therapy.

I can feel the relationship.
I can feel the importance of what is happening between us.
I can feel the thread that, if we stay with it, could lead to something deeply healing.

And at the same time, the person sitting across from me may not yet have the capacity to feel that relational opportunity in the same way.

We are wired to be in relationship

My therapeutic perspective has been shaped, both personally and professionally, by a deep belief that our lives are built in relationship.

The relationship we have with ourselves.
The relationships we have with others.

According to Esther Perel, the quality of those relationships often defines the quality of our lives.
Relationships give our lives meaning.
Resilience.
A deep sense of being alive.

Relationships are where we grow.
Where we discover ourselves.
Where we are challenged, shaped, and softened.

And they are also where rupture happens.

Yet, rupture is not the end of a relationship.
It can be an invitation, an invitation we need to brave enough to accept.

Because when we can stay, when we can return, when we can repair,
something even deeper becomes possible.

Connection that is more honest.
More resilient.
More real and truer.

When Our Earliest Relationships Let Us Down

Developmental trauma is often not just about what happened.
It’s about what didn’t.

The co-regulation that wasn’t there.
The emotional mirroring that didn’t happen.
The steady presence that helps a child learn:
“I can feel something hard and stay connected at the same time.”

Without that early experience, relationship itself can feel unsafe.

Not having that early template for healthy relationships does matter. It shapes how we show up, how we protect, how we make sense of closeness and conflict. And at the same time, it is not a free pass to harm or dismiss the impact we have on others. It is an invitation.

An invitation to grow.
To learn what was never taught.
To begin building a new template, one shaped in real time, in relationship with people who are willing to stand beside you, reflect with you, and support you in becoming more steady, more honest, and more connected.

So, when something important arises, especially something vulnerable, something that could impact the relationship, the system does what it knows how to do.

It protects.

It redirects.
It edits the story.
It moves away from the center.
And if we get close enough to the truth, it may shut down altogether.

And here is where it gets hard.

Hard because I am in the relationship.

And this is not a new relationship.
It is one that has history. I care deeply for this person. Care grown from our shared history.

Which means something else becomes crystal clear to me in moments like this:

The places where the work has landed,
and the places where there are still gaps.

Therapy Can Be Tested

I am learning, again and again, that therapy is often tested not in the easy moments, but in these difficult moments.

In the tension.
In the rupture.
In the moments where what we have built is suddenly strained.

Where I can feel how much growth has happened,
and also how much more is needed to support a more adult, steady, relational way of being.

And I can feel the risk.

That the relationship may not hold.
That the client may decide to leave.
That I may be misunderstood or experienced as something I am not.

That is part of this work, too.

And this is not just something I understand professionally.

It is something I have had to learn personally.

There have been many moments in my own life where shame has come in quickly. Moments where I’ve felt like I did something wrong, said something wrong, was something wrong. Moments where my instinct was to pull back, to protect, to leave the space before I could be left.

Learning to stay in those moments, to stay in the relationship, to stay in the discomfort, to stay long enough to find truth instead of reacting from fear, has been some of the hardest and most meaningful work of my life.

So, with my client in this tension, I felt both things.

I felt the steadiness of the therapist I have become.
And I felt the tenderness of the human who knows exactly how powerful shame can be.

I felt sad. Sad for them and sad for me.

Not because something failed.
But because something meaningful was touched… and then lost, at least for now.

Therapy is not just insight.
It is capacity.

And capacity takes time.

It takes repeated experiences of:

• being seen without being shamed

• being honest without losing connection

• feeling something hard and not being left alone in it

Over and over again.

The Relational Work

This experience reminded me of something I know, but still feel every time:

Sometimes the most important work is not what is said.
It is what happens in the relationship when things get hard.

The rupture.
The confusion.
The misalignment.
The moment someone pulls away.

That is not the failure of therapy.

That is the work.

And it is also where the paradox lives.

Because I can hold the relationship,
and care deeply about it,
and feel the loss when it shifts…

while also knowing:

I have the strength, the fortitude, and the capacity to stay in the tension.

To not rush.
To not close the door.
To not take the protection personally, even when it lands that way.

And to trust that if and when they find their way back,
we can do the most important work there is:

Repair.

This is why I believe therapy works best when the therapist shares their humanity.

Not perfect.
Not distant.
But present enough to feel the relationship,
and steady enough to not collapse when it gets hard.

If you’ve ever found yourself pulling away when something matters,
or struggling to say the thing that could change a relationship…

there is nothing wrong with you.

There may just be something in you
that never learned how to stay.

And “staying” can be learned.
Slowly.
Together.

Not lonely in the way people imagine loneliness. My life is actually very full. I have a husband I adore, adult children I love fiercely, friends I laugh with, colleagues I respect, and golden retrievers who greet every morning like it’s the best day ever.

But there’s a particular kind of loneliness that lives inside the work of being a therapist.

A quiet one.

A professional one.

A loneliness created not by the absence of people, but by the boundaries required to support our work.

And most therapists don’t talk about it out loud.

Every week I sit with people while they tell me the deepest truths of their lives.

Their heartbreak.
Their grief.
Their shame.
Their childhood stories.
Their fears about relationships, about being unlovable, about being too much.

They trust me with things they may never tell another person.

And I never forget that this is sacred work.

The therapy room container belongs to them.

Their story matters.

Their experience leads the conversation.

But holding that many human stories has a weight to it.

And the weight is mostly silent.

There are moments in session when something a client says reminds me of someone I love.

A story about a son navigating adulthood, and suddenly I’m thinking of my own child.

A story about a marriage trying to find its footing again, and my heart flashes briefly to my husband.

Moments that remind me of my own therapy journey and a sweet tear wells up in my eye.

A memory someone shares about their childhood that reminds me of something from my own past.

These moments happen quietly, like emotional echoes. Over and over all day.

But I usually can’t follow them.

I can’t say, “That reminds me of my son.”
Or “I know that feeling because something similar happened in my life.”
Or “My heart just softened thinking about my husband when you said that.”

The moment isn’t mine.

The story isn’t mine.

So, the feeling moves through me silently, like a wave that rises and folds back into the ocean.

No one sees it. Only I feel it.

And that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be.

But over time, those quiet waves add up.

Therapists are trained to hold space. We are trained to listen.

We are trained to be thoughtful and careful about how much of ourselves we bring into the room.

We learn early on that therapy is not a two-way conversation in the way most human conversations are. And most of the time, that boundary is exactly what makes therapy work.

But it also means something else.

We spend hours in deeply meaningful conversations where we cannot fully participate in the way humans normally do.

We can’t casually say, “Me too!”
We can’t say, “That reminds me of something that happened to me last weekend.”
We can’t follow the natural rhythm of back-and-forth storytelling that most relationships rely on.

We hold the container.

Most of the time, we stand just outside of it.

And yet, occasionally, when I know a client exceptionally well, when the relationship is steady and the moment calls for it, I may offer a small piece of my own humanity. I may chime in with an excited, “Me too!” as we bond over a Netflix commonality.

Not to take the moment.

Not to redirect the focus.

But to deepen it.

Sometimes a carefully offered “you’re not the only one who has felt this way” can soften the isolation someone carries. Sometimes a tiny glimpse of our shared humanity allows the client to feel less alone in their experience.

Those moments are sporadic. Intentional. Thoughtful.

And even then, the moment still belongs to them.

Because the work is never about inserting myself into their story.

It’s about helping someone feel that their story can be held safely in the presence of another human being.

Even if most of the time, the human being of the therapist stays quietly in the background.

There’s another layer to this loneliness too.

Confidentiality.

Therapists hear stories that would shake most people.

Stories of abuse.
Stories of betrayal.
Stories of loss.
Stories of people trying desperately to hold their lives together.

And then we leave the office and walk into the rest of our lives.

We go to dinner.

We go to the grocery store.

We sit on the couch with our families.

And the stories stay inside us.

Not because we want them to.

Because they must.

We can talk in general ways with colleagues sometimes.

We can process themes.

We can consult with other therapists.

But the exact stories, the raw human details, are not ours to share.

So they live quietly inside us.

There are also the small moments between sessions.

The few minutes when I stand up, stretch, run to the restroom, check my phone, and prepare to meet the next human story of the day.

In those moments I sometimes feel the emotional residue of what I’ve just heard.

Not because the story belongs to me.

But because empathy is not a switch I turn on and off.

It moves through my body.

It lands somewhere in my chest.

Sometimes it stays there longer than I expect.

And yet, despite all of this, I love being a therapist.

Deeply.

I believe in this work.

I believe in the quiet courage it takes for someone to sit down and tell the truth about their life.

I believe in healing.

I’ve watched people transform their relationships, their self-worth, their capacity to feel joy again.

I’ve seen people reclaim parts of themselves they thought were gone forever.

It’s extraordinary to witness.

But loving this work and acknowledging its loneliness can exist at the same time.

Both things are true.

That’s the paradox of being a therapist.

What helps is community.

Other therapists and “therafriends” who understand the strange emotional geometry of this profession.

Friends who don’t need to know the details but can sense when your nervous system needs a little more TLC.

Family who loves you even when you come home quieter than usual.

The people who remind you that you are way more than the role you play in the therapy room.

And sometimes writing helps too.

Because writing is one of the few places where I can say something about the experience of being the person in the chair.

Not about the people I work with.

Their stories are not mine to tell.

But about the space that exists around those stories.

The quiet edges of this profession.

The moments therapists rarely say out loud.

If you’re a therapist reading this, you might recognize some of this feeling.

The quiet responsibility.

The emotional weight that no one outside the field quite understands.

The strange combination of deep connection and subtle distance.

And if you’re someone who has sat across from a therapist, I hope this offers a small window into what the work is like on the other side of the room.

Not to shift the focus away from clients.

But to acknowledge something simple and true:

Therapists are human too.

We carry stories.

We feel things. Deeply.

We miss people. A lot!

We need community.

We need places where we can exhale.

I’m curious about something.

If you’re a therapist, coach, teacher, physician, clergy member, or anyone who spends their days holding space for other people…

Do you ever feel this quiet version of loneliness too?

Not isolation.

But the feeling of carrying a lot that can’t always be spoken out loud.

I’d love to hear your experience. Please share with me.

Sometimes the best antidote to loneliness,
is realizing we were never the only ones feeling it.

The degrees. The licenses. The proof of being an EMDR expert.
The professional identifiers that signal competence, authority, legitimacy.

The ones I always add with pride, and maybe a slight sense of arrogance.

It wasn’t impulsive.
It wasn’t rebellious for the sake of rebellion.
And it certainly wasn’t because those credentials don’t matter.

They do.

I worked hard for them. I earned them. I maintain them. I honor them.

But I realized something quietly important:

They are not who I am.

And on a platform where I am writing about paradox, healing, humanity, and lived experience,

I didn’t want the first thing you saw to be my professional armor.

I wanted you to see me.

Deconstructing the Sterile Therapy Model

Grad school trained me well in many ways. It many ways it failed me.

It also trained fear into me.

Fear that if I acknowledged a client at Publix, I might be violating a boundary.
Fear that if I disclosed something small and human, I could blur lines.
Fear that my role required a kind of emotional distance that felt… unnatural at best, harmful at worst.

There was an implicit script:
Be warm, but not too warm.
Be human, but not too human.
Be known, but only in controlled doses.

And somewhere along the way, I realized that this model, while designed to protect, can sometimes sterilize the very thing that heals.

The relationship.

I am a person-centered therapist.
My humanity is not a liability. It is the foundation.

I do not show up as a clinical expert dispensing wisdom from a carefully measured distance.

I show up as a guide.

Grounded. Attuned. Regulated. Skilled.

But human. With bumps, and bruises and a too long list of failures.

Credentials Matter — But They Do Not Define Me

My license matters professionally. It protects clients. It holds me accountable. It signals that I have training and ethical standards.

And it does not define my presence in the room.

The most meaningful feedback I receive from clients is not:

“You are clinically impressive.”

It is:

“I feel safe here.”
“Thank you for sharing that, I am not alone.”
“You are a real person with real life stuff.”

The letters behind my name do not create that.

The relationship does.

Therapy Is Changing, and It’s Finally Time

The old model suggested the therapist should be a blank slate, sharing almost nothing.

But healing from attachment wounds does not happen in front of a blank wall.

It happens in relationship.

In my practice:

• We exchange appropriate texts between sessions when something important arises.

• We share the occasional meme that captures a truth words can’t and makes each other giggle.

• We laugh. A LOT!

• We sit in silence. I love to look out my office window at the trees and birds and think.

• We repair when something feels off. We take risks together.

• I allow myself to be known in ways that support the work we are doing together.

Last week, our family dog Bunker passed away.

Several clients knew.
Some asked how I was doing.
Some shared memories of their own losses.
There was a gentle, appropriate exchange of humanity.

Did that diminish the therapy?

No.

It deepened trust.

Because grief is not one-directional.
And support, when ethically and lovingly held, does not “contaminate” the work we do. Support strengthens the relational experience.

The Paradox I Live Inside

I own both a group practice and a private practice.

And that is its own paradox.

In my group practice, I wrestle with short-sighted insurance policies that reduce complex trauma work to billable units.

Fifty-three minutes.
Diagnostic codes.
Productivity metrics. BLAH, BLAH, BLAH.

And yet, I work in that space because I believe deeply in expanding access to exceptional trauma therapy. I want people who may never have access to warm and skilled therapists to have the same opportunity I built in my personal private practice.

I am building something larger than myself there.

At the same time, in my solo private practice, I lean into longer EMDR intensives and deep relational work.

Two-hour sessions, many times longer.
Extended processing.
Spacious integration.

Not because it’s trendy.
But because nervous systems need time. Both my nervous system and my clients.

Insurance companies do not value this pacing.
But trauma healing does.

And I have to hold both realities:
The system as it is.
And the work as I believe it should be.

Rewriting the Script

Here are some of the ways I am quietly rewriting the traditional therapy script:

1. I prioritize nervous system sustainability, for my clients and for myself.
Burned-out therapists do not create regulated spaces. I protect my own capacity intentionally.

2. I allow appropriate mutuality.
Not role reversal. Not over-sharing. But genuine presence.

3. I honor lived experience alongside my clinical training.
Both matter. Neither dominates the therapy space.

4. I refuse to pathologize adaptive survival strategies, even when they no longer serve.
Your nervous system is not broken. It learned something brilliant. It may have kept you alive.

5. I view therapy as a genuine relationship, not a service transaction.
The therapeutic bond is not secondary to technique. It is the intervention.

That kind of impact cannot be measured in CPT codes.

Why I Removed the Letters

On Substack, I am often not writing as a licensed clinician.

I am writing as Amy.

A trauma therapist.
A wife.
A mother.
A leader.
A woman still healing her own nervous system.
A human navigating paradox.

If you choose to work with me professionally, the credentials are there. They are intact. They matter.

But they are not my identity.

And they are not what makes therapy transformative.

The Future of Therapy, as I see it.

Therapy is moving toward:

• Greater transparency

• More relational depth

• Nervous system-informed pacing

• Integration of lived experience

• Ethical use of digital connection

• Recognition that community matters

• Longer-form healing spaces outside insurance limitations

• Acknowledgment that therapists are humans inside the room, not sterile experts hovering above it

The future of therapy is not less professional.

It is more relational.

And that requires courage, from therapists and clients alike.

Removing my credentials from behind my name on Substack was not about rejecting my profession.

It was about reclaiming my humanity within it.

I will always honor my training.
I will always practice ethically.
I will always protect the sacredness of the therapeutic space.

But I will no longer pretend that distance equals safety and good therapy.

For many of us, safety was built and then dismantled in relationship.

And that is how it will be rebuilt.

With skill.
With integrity.
With boundaries.
With tremendous heart.

And with the courage to be known as a fellow human with my own bumps, bruises and lived experience.

It’s 6AM Saturday, the stars are bright.

I am realizing how comforting it feels to sit outside and stare skyward.

The house has been quiet for days. A different quiet, no pups barking.

The Goldens haven’t really been playing together.

Something began to shift to quiet a week ago towards retreat, isolation, separateness, caution and uncertainty.

As I stare at the morning sky, GusGus arrives sniffing the chair while his tail is wagging. It hasn’t wagged in a long time.

Yoddha is sniffing our patio area, her tail wagging with a force.

“Do you wanna play guys?” I ask, receiving a resounding affirmation…the infamous Golden pounce…not once, but twice.

I lean over to hug Bunker, to feel the safety of our bond, our incredible soul connection. We are bonded so much he wanted to be in my skin.

In seconds realize it’s GusGus wanting to be close to me. I hug him with fierce love, remind him how sorry I am that his brother has transitioned.

Bunker, just 81/2, lived with cancer for 7 months. We made sure life was filled with joy for him. Over the past week, he was gently sharing how much he wanted to stay with us and how very tired his body is.

Two days ago, Thursday, we helped Bunker journey through his conflict to become pain free. Four sets of our hands and voices telling him it was ok to go. Ok to sleep. Ok to go run and play.

Reminding him of how deeply we loved him. Thanking him for sharing his gifts with us.

His last act of love before surrendering to sleep, giving Sam a gentle kiss on her nose as they laid staring at each other, face to face. And then Bunker became pain and anxiety free.

Bunker is running in a meadow now, feeling our love forever. We feel all of his love and playfulness. In my mind, I’ll forever watch his crazy headstands.

The silent excruciating grief. For the humans and dogs left behind.

Bunker’s human family can talk, seek support, sob out loud so many times until the tears fade away. His pack family, GusGus and Yoddha, are confused yet all knowing. They retreat. They have barely eaten. Well, maybe Yoddha hasn’t missed a meal. GusGus throws his food back to us in hours. His tail stopped wagging, he has been looking away from us.

This morning, a reordering of sorts was obvious. An invitation to play. Tennis ball throwing was requested. Gus following the birds chirping, Yoyo asking to be taught to catch a ball (she’s not an athlete for sure).

The grief dogs feel is silent. We must invite it to come forth. To allow their space and time to grieve. I imagine it feels like a betrayal for them to wonder where their pack leader has gone. Simultaneously, I wonder if their internal wisdom already knows and is grateful, we provided Bunker with relief, peace and calm.

The tears won’t stop for a long long time. I imagine sleep, for me, will continue to be difficult to find. Sam will honor Bunkie in her way and leave the dog bowl from last Thursdays breakfast untouched, remaining in the same spot. Chris prefers quiet reflection in his own time. C.J. and Madison will continue to feel sadness and joy simultaneously as they prepare for their first child to soon arrive. It warms my heart that maybe, just maybe, Bunker is meeting their child and keeping him safe until C.J. and Madison hold him in their arms.

I will continue to struggle greatly, finding solace in my adaptive powers to dissociate when needed and allowing the grief to pour out in the many pockets of my day. I hold all the parts of myself that are feeling all the things. Yes, this particular grief journey feels worse than losing a human. Don’t question that. People who say “he was just a dog” don’t stay in my life.

GusGus and Yoddha, they will be surrounded by love and we’ll learn from them. We will make sure they have what they need, feel loved, are allowed to feel sad and grieve. We will be present for their silent cues.

Grieving pet families are feeling silent grief that needs to be shared.

The silent excruciating grief of saying goodbye to a cherished loved one, who also happened to be the most amazing golden retriever, jumper, ball catcher and home security system.

Goodbye my faithful buddy. I will see you again and we will dance together when we reunite.

I promise.

I am with my husband.
My kids are safe and sound.
I am in my home.
Nothing bad is happening.

And yet, my body doesn’t always know that.

My nervous system tightens. My breath stays shallow. My awareness scans for something that isn’t there. Sometimes I feel unsettled, edgy, or braced, without a clear reason.

For a long time, this confused me.

How could I feel unsafe inside a life I worked so hard to build?

The answer, I’ve come to understand, lives inside a paradox that shows up consistently in trauma work:

Safety can feel unsafe, especially when it is unfamiliar.

When Safety Wasn’t the Norm

For many of us, safety wasn’t the baseline we grew up with.

We learned to be alert early.
We learned to read rooms, tone, mood, threat.
We learned to stay one step ahead, not because we were anxious people, but because vigilance was adaptive.

Our nervous systems did exactly what they were designed to do.

So when safety finally arrives, real safety, relational safety, sustained safety…it doesn’t always feel like relief.

Sometimes it feels like exposure.

Safety asks us to lower the armor.
To soften the muscles that have stayed ready for impact.
To exhale fully.

And that exhale can feel terrifying.

Because for many of us, the armor is what kept us alive.

Feeling Safe Is Vulnerable

We don’t talk about this enough.

Allowing ourselves to feel safe is one of the most vulnerable things we can do.

Not the dramatic vulnerability of disclosure or tears. I am talking about the quiet vulnerability of letting our guard down when nothing is demanding that we do so.

Safety requires trust.
Trust requires risk.
And risk is something a trauma-shaped nervous system has learned to avoid at all costs.

So instead of exhaling, we hover.
Instead of settling, we stay alert.
Instead of resting, we brace.

And often, we don’t even realize we’re doing it.

The Addictive Pull of Unsafety

Here’s another truth that can feel uncomfortable to name:

Feeling unsafe can become familiar.
And familiar can feel like control.

When your nervous system lives in a steady stream of adrenaline and cortisol, that state begins to feel normal. For me, and many others I imagine, it can even feel motivating.

Urgency can masquerade as productivity.
Hypervigilance can look like preparedness.
Anxiety can feel like responsibility.

There’s a strange energy that comes from always being “on.”
A sense of movement. A sense of purpose.

And in a world that never stop. In a world where bad news scrolls endlessly, where trauma repeats itself across screens, where even logging onto Instagram can hijack our nervous systems, remaining in a state of unsafety is not just common.

It’s reinforced. It’s sold to us.

We are collectively walking around with nervous systems that rarely get to stand down.

And over time, safety doesn’t feel soothing, it feels suspicious.

When Even Rest Feels Dangerous

I see this everywhere. I experience it myself.

People tell me they can’t relax without feeling guilty.
That stillness makes them anxious.
That joy feels fleeting or dangerous.
That calm feels like “tempting fate.”

Our bodies asks: What will I miss if I stop watching?
Our nervous systems whispers: If you let your guard down, something bad will happen.

So we stay braced.
We stay busy.
We stay informed to the point of overwhelm.

And then we wonder why we’re exhausted.

The Therapy Space: Where Safety Often Arrives First

Here’s the paradox I witness most clearly in the my therapy space:

For many people, therapy is the first place safety is consistently offered.

Not perfection.
Not constant happiness.
But steadiness. Predictability. Attunement.

And when clients begin to feel that safety, something unexpected often happens.

They get anxious.
They feel uncomfortable.
They struggle to breathe deeply.
They want to pull away.

They want to stop coming to therapy.

Not because therapy is harmful. Because their nervous system is encountering something unfamiliar.

That first real exhale can feel like dismantling armor piece by piece.
And armor, even when it’s heavy, can feel protective.

I often tell my clients, while simultaneously reminding myself:

“Nothing is wrong. Your body is learning something new.”

Learning that it doesn’t have to stay on guard.
Learning that safety doesn’t require vigilance.
Learning that being held doesn’t mean being trapped.

Being “Safe When We Are Safe”

This might be one of the hardest practices there is:

Letting ourselves be safe when we are actually safe.

Not when the crisis has passed.
Not when everything is perfect.
But right now, in this moment, with what is.

This is not passive.
It is not naive.
And it is not a denial of reality.

It is an act of courage. It’s allowing risk taking.

It asks us to notice:

• When our body is responding to the past instead of the present

• When unsafety has become the default setting

• When we are gripping instead of grounding

And it asks us, gently, to choose something different.

Or, possibly you were told “you are safe here”, and that felt like a lie. No one gets else gets to decide if we are safe. We decide, with our nervous systems, when it feels safe to feel safe.

The Slow Work of Relearning Safety

Safety is not a switch you flip.

It is a skill your nervous system relearns over time.

Through repetition.
Through relationship.
Through moments of choosing to exhale even when it feels strange.

Sometimes safety looks like:

• Putting the phone down

• Turning off the news

• Letting someone else hold the emotional weight

• Allowing joy without waiting for the other shoe to drop

Sometimes safety is quiet.
Sometimes it feels boring.
Sometimes it feels wrong.

And sometimes, that’s how you know it’s real.

If you find yourself feeling unsafe even in the presence of love,
If calm makes you restless,
If safety feels unfamiliar or hard to trust,

You are not broken.

Your nervous system is doing what it learned to do.

And with patience, support, and compassion, it can learn something new.

Safety doesn’t always feel like warmth at first.
Sometimes it feels like standing in the open without armor.

And that, beautifully, painfully, is where healing begins.

When Your Mind Knows You’re Safe, But Your Body Doesn’t

This is such an important distinction.

Many of us can say, intellectually, “I’m safe right now.”
And still feel flooded, braced, or on edge.

That doesn’t mean the affirmation isn’t working.
It means your nervous system needs a different kind of information.

Safety is not a thought.
It’s an experience. A full body experience.

Here are a few ways to gently offer your body evidence of safety. No forcing it, rushing it, or arguing with it.

1. Orient to What Is Actually Around You

Trauma pulls us into past time. Orientation brings us back.

Take some time to slowly name:

• Three things you can see

• Two things you can hear

• One thing you can physically touch

Not as a grounding exercise you “perform,” but as a noticing:
This chair is holding me.
That light is steady.
Nothing is demanding my action right now.

Let your eyes move. Let your head turn.
Orientation tells the nervous system: The environment is not a threat.

2. Let Safety Be Partial

You don’t have to feel completely safe.

Sometimes the most regulating truth is:

“I am safe enough in this moment.”

Enough to sit.
Enough to breathe.
Enough to stay.

Safety doesn’t have to be total for healing to happen.

3. Work With the Exhale. Gently.

For many people, the inhale feels fine.
It’s the exhale that feels risky.

Exhaling can feel like letting go of control.

Instead of a deep breath, try:

• A slow sigh

• A soft hum

• A gentle lengthening of the exhale by just one count

Think of it as loosening, not releasing. Just a bit, allow the grip to lessen.

4. Use Touch as Containment, Not Comfort

Place a hand on your chest, belly, or thigh—not to calm yourself down, but to contain what’s already there.

This is not about making the feeling go away.
It’s about staying with yourself while it’s present.

Touch can say:
I’m here. I’m not leaving.

5. Name the Time Zone You Are In.

Sometimes simply saying:

“This is now. That was then.” can help differentiate past from present. Look at the date on your phone. Remind yourself where you are in time.

You’re not trying to erase the past, just reminding your body that the threat is no longer happening right now.

6. Limit the Nervous System Hijacks

In a world where trauma is constantly broadcast, this matters.

You are allowed to:

• Step away from the news

• Mute accounts that flood your system

• Take breaks from social media. Even the meaningful parts of social media can feel overwhelming

Protecting your nervous system is not avoidance.
It is discernment.

7. Let Safety Come Through Relationship

Sometimes we can’t feel safe alone, and that’s not a failure.

Safety often arrives through:

• Sitting next to someone

• Hearing a familiar voice

• Being seen without explanation

This is why therapy works.
This is why community matters.

Borrowed safety still counts. It really counts a lot.

Allow yourself to ease in gently

If your body resists safety, it’s not because it’s broken.

It’s because safety once meant something different.

Go slowly.
Be kind and gentle with yourself.
Let safety be unfamiliar without making it wrong.

Healing doesn’t begin when we feel perfectly safe.
It begins when we stay present even when safety feels strange, even if just for a moment.

One room. Two chairs. One relationship at a time.
Deep presence. Long sessions. Space to listen, feel, and respond with care.

And for many years, that was exactly right.

But over time, something kept tugging at me, quietly at first, then with more insistence. A knowing that my work was meant to widen, deepen and grow. Not dilute. Not rush. But expand.

This wasn’t about scaling for the sake of growth, business volume or branding.
It wasn’t about productivity, hustle, or becoming “bigger.”

It was about capacity, teaching, community, and legacy.

I Was Lonely in Solo Practice, and That Mattered Deeply

This part feels important to name.

Solo practice can be beautiful, and it can also be isolating.

There were days when I held story after story, nervous system after nervous system, and then closed my door at the end of the day to silence. No hallway conversations. No shared processing. No one who really understood the weight of the work in real time.

I was doing meaningful work, but I was doing it alone.

And somewhere along the way, I realized something that felt both obvious and tender:

If healing from trauma happens in relationship, why was I trying to do this work without one?

I didn’t just want colleagues to share the days with,
I wanted community.

I wanted a place where therapists could think together, regulate together, learn together, and remind each other that none of us is meant to hold this work in isolation.

Healing Doesn’t Happen in Isolation: For Clients or Therapists

So much of the pain I see in the therapy room traces back to disconnection, mis attunement and the sense of “no one gets me”.

Early wounds. Attachment injuries. Relational ruptures.
Experiences where people had to survive alone—emotionally, physically, many times both.

Healing from those kinds of wounds doesn’t happen through gaining insight alone.
It happens through being met.
Through repair.
Through belonging.

I realized that truth applies not just to clients, but to therapists, too.

A group practice allows healing to happen on so many levels:

• Clients heal in safe therapeutic relationships

• Therapists grow within supportive professional relationships

• New therapists learn in community, not in fear

• And leaders practice not carrying everything alone

Community is not a “nice extra.”
It is a corrective experience.

I Wanted to Teach, Not Just Practice

As I moved deeper into trauma and relationship work, especially EMDR, attachment, and developmental trauma and how that affects our relationships, I found myself mentoring more and more newer clinicians. I also noticed many seasoned clinicians wanted to practice therapy differently yet didn’t quite know how to unlearn and unwind from the years, decades, of a sterile psychotherapy structure.

They came with strong hearts, solid training, and a deep desire to do this work well!
And, they were often overwhelmed, under-supported, and afraid of getting it wrong.

I recognized myself in them.

I wanted to create a place where therapists could learn slowly, be supervised thoughtfully, and develop their clinical voice without being rushed or reduced to productivity metrics.

A teaching group practice allows me to do what I love most:

• Supervise, teach and consult with intention while remaining relationally present

• Translate theory into lived, relational practice

• Normalize uncertainty, depth and nuances

• Model ethical, attuned, human therapy

This practice isn’t just about seeing clients.
It’s about forming therapists.

I Wanted to Expand Access to Good Therapy

I can only see so many clients.

And as much as I value the depth of my own clinical work, I became increasingly aware of the gap between the need for trauma-focused therapy and the availability of it. No longer is it enough to simply be “trauma informed”.

Waitlists grew. Calls went unanswered. People needed help now.

Expanding into a group practice wasn’t about replacing my work, it was about multiplying it.

By building a team aligned in values, pacing, and clinical philosophy, we’re able to:

• Serve more individuals, couples, and families

• Offer a range of modalities and perspectives

• Reduce barriers to care

• Hold more stories with care and competence and help more humans heal

This is how I think about growth now:
More hands, same heart centered intentionality.

I Wanted to Build Something That Would Outlast Me

At this stage of my life, I think a lot about legacy.

Not legacy as ego.
Legacy as continuity.

What happens to the wisdom, the lessons, the hard-earned knowing if it stays only inside me?

A group practice allows me to:

• Codify what I’ve learned into systems, procedures and trainings

• Create training and perspective pathways that reflect my values and wisdom

• Pass on clinical judgment, not just techniques

• Build something that can continue serving long after I step back

This is not about leaving.
It’s about leaving something behind.

I Wanted to Practice Leadership That Feels Human

I didn’t want to build a factory.
I wanted to build a community.

One where therapists are respected as whole people, deeply human and individuals.
Where nervous systems matter.
Where supervision is relational, not performative, shaming or ill-advised.
Where growth is encouraged, but not at the expense of well-being.

Running a group practice is stretching me, not just as a clinician, but as a leader, teacher, and steward of others’ work and lives. It allows me to be human, make mistakes, repair my mess-ups and take risks while remaining grounded in my human frame and value system.

It asks more of me.
And it gives more back.

This Is Still About Relationship

At the core, this expansion isn’t a departure from my original work.

It’s an extension of it.

I believe healing happens in relationship.
I believe safety is built slowly.
I believe both learned and lived experience matter.
I believe therapy is a craft and an art, not a formula.

A group practice allows me to live those beliefs in community, not just with clients, but with the therapists who walk alongside me in this work.

This is why I expanded.
Not to do more, but to do this differently, together.

If you’re here reading this, whether you’re a client, therapist, student, or fellow traveler, thank you for being part of this unfolding.

We’re building something meaningful.
And we’re not doing it alone.

Bottom line: Food and I have had a difficult relationship for all of my 56 years. We struggle to stay in a healthy relationship. In fact, I would probably go so far to say that I have an eating disorder.

Let’s get this out of the way quickly. I am a trauma survivor (thriver). My ACE score is a 10. I love to add humor to that truth about myself by sharing that my ACE score is the only time in my life that I have been a “Perfect 10”. Cue the “10” movie music with iconic Bo Derek running down a beach somewhere with her hair in beautiful long braids…. but, instead, you have 5’ 3” tomboyish Amy ducking and dodging, mostly by hiding high up in a tree somewhere, from the ACE list of assaults, and more, as I moved through childhood and adolescence. All the while, I was relentless is trying to grow up with hope, faith, dreams and determination. Thank you, dissociation!

Just this past December, it became abundantly clear to me on a whole other level that there is a significant connection between food decisions and deep attachment wounding. Thank you 2020 for sharing yet another profound self-discovery moment as you head out the door.

Back in 1972, I was just 8 years old and living alone with my mother. We’ll get back to that.

My parents divorced when I was 4, after years of trying to blend a family with four teenagers and a new baby (me). There was tremendous chaos in the home I spent my earliest years, with frequent domestic violence. My oldest brother was consistently in significant trouble that had an anti-social flair to it. My father’s two daughters were struggling with the recent death of their biological mother and resisting any attempt, albeit probably misguided, at bonding my mother offered. Both sisters were interested in me, but honestly, surviving emotionally was a critical task for them as they approached their 20’s. Karen married very young and Sue threw herself into nursing school. I can now see clearly how they escaped the chaos. I came along as quite a surprise to my parents as they entered their fourth decade, and I imagine just my being was unwelcome and disruptive to this already fractured family system. My mother shared with me that it felt confusing to her to witness how much her father loved me when he previously had urged her to have an abortion when learning she was pregnant with me. He suggested that I would probably ruin her life. My mother used valium and alcohol to cope with her own troubled life, along with a hot temper. When I was two, she landed in a psychiatric hospital for suicidal behaviors.

One “normal” day, she dropped me off at day care, picked me at the end of the day and took me to a new home. Gone was my big yellow house, father, sisters and yard with all the trees…and my many stuffed animals that kept me company. Home was now an apartment with she and Jeff, my elder brother by 12 years and my shelter in the storm of my childhood. At least Mrs. Beasley was still always there to keep me company. As my mother showed me to my new room, with most of my things missing (at least those things that are important to a 4-year-old), she found great joy in telling me that she made sure Mrs. Beasley came with us.

Life for the next three years was a bit calmer, at least by my family’s standards. I spent my 5^th birthday looking out my bedroom window watching my party happen. My mother was upset with me, yet again, for being “too much and too sensitive”. I was punished on the day of my party, finally able to join in the fun later in the day. My oldest brother and his girlfriend had a baby, which meant I became an aunt at age 6. I totally fell in love with my nephew. 50 years later, Christian, is a “little brother” and soul partner that I cherish in ways I cannot describe. We have walked through the depths of hell together and thrived in ways that should have been impossible.

At this new apartment, Jeff was around all the time. I liked it. As Jeff was trying to balance becoming a young man deciding about colleges, he also balanced caring for an inquisitive chatterbox 5-year-old sister and alcoholic mother.

At 7, a trio of tragic events hit my young life and destroyed any semblance and shred of secure attachments that I was able to form in the years prior. Jeff left for college, leaving me alone with my mother. My father died suddenly of a massive heart attack. I met, and then never saw again, my paternal grandparents at the gathering after my father’s funeral. This event also led to the slow erasing of my relationship with my sisters, Karen and Sue.

For my first 7 years of life, I found great comfort in the chaos, uncertainty, abuse and dysfunction of my family. Now, I was suddenly alone. Alone with my mother and her alcoholic valium addiction, laced with a two pack a day habit of Marlboro Light 100’s. My mother had at least two, maybe more, very distinct parts to herself. Marilyn was a hard-working social worker during the height of her career. In fact, as her work time began to wind down, she developed the first Hospice program at the hospital where she was employed. That was no small feat in the late 70’s and early 80’s when talking about death and dying was still a taboo subject in many ways. I do feel strongly that years after my mother went into recovery, she was able to express her love for me. From my mid/late teens until my mother passed away in 2014, I was aware of her love for me.

The earlier years of my life, when my natural and healthy need for secure attachment was strongest, sadly intersected with the most difficult years of my mother’s life. It becomes an untenable situation when a child’s emotional, physical and secure attachment development is interrupted by booze, drugs, blackouts and lack of attunement from the only available caretaker.

The ongoing damages can heal, and leaves scars. The scar tissue of healing self-worth never really goes away. Is it impossible to make up for what should have been and never was? Is there a small percentage of wounding left unhealable? Can a person with disorganized attachment transformed to earned secure attachment ever feel the same sense of worth as a person who grew up with secure healthy attachment?

During the ages of 7-12, I basically raised myself. As my mother’s alcohol dependence deepened, she could barely make it through a workday, let alone care for me in the evening. Bottom line…I was hungry most nights. She was not available physically, emotionally or soberly to make dinner for me. I hid under the kitchen table for most of these years.

DRIVE THROUGH LOVE BECOMES MY SAVIOR

During these toughest of years, my mother would satisfy my pestering for dinner by taking me to the Burger King drive thru for dinner. On these special nights, I would climb into the back of my mother’s gold Buick Skylark as she drove, drunk most times, to the nearest Burger King. There was a friendly energetic voice that would come through the loudspeaker at the ordering station. Then a few feet later, I would be greeted by a smiling person at the window who delivered my dinner to me at the back window of our car. All my senses would come alive. I could see the smiling, attentive person who was focused only on me in the back seat. I could feel their attention to me in those few moments of interaction. I could smell the yummy French Fries. I could taste the juicy hamburger. I could hear and really take in the kind words of “see you later, have a nice day”. This was my attunement utopia as a little girl. I felt loved. This was all it took to activate Oxytocin in my system, and this is where I learned to go to have it activated again and again, time after time. I remember wondering if this is what it is like for my school friends who went home after school to a warm house filled with laughter, connection and family dinners. I later learned, with my own contemporary family, that yes; family dinners and connection time are much more than passes through a drive thru.

And so began the pattern that would form a life long habit. All of my life, when I feel “out of whack”, alone, forgotten and anxious, I would head to the nearest drive thru for a quick hit of oxytocin, pleasure centers induced “food” and human connection that felt like real love to younger parts of me. Until I was 40, it was easy to get away with this habit. I was thinner and in fairly good shape physically all of my life; thanks to years of being a dancer, athlete and then 15 years as a dance teacher.

No one noticed this shadow side of my life.

I kept my own secret. My kids were raised on family dinners and healthy food.

Even for the past 16 years, I have been able to escape the deep dive into this dark area of my humanity. I haven’t been able to escape the 50 lbs I have put on, but I have avoided becoming exceptionally clear on the connection to my weight struggle and early attachment wounding. Doing that work is some deep shit. I have spent the last almost 12 years unraveling the huge, tangled spaghetti bowl of trauma, attachment injuries and dissociative responses to life and could have almost considered myself “good enough for now” from a healing perspective.

Wrong.

Back to last December. On 12/17/20, I was in the dentist chair early in the morning having a permanent crown put on tooth #19. Due to a few other personal experiences that were happening in my life, my dissociative system was on high alert. My powerful parts were not having any of it for this dental procedure and were doing all they could to block the Novocain. After four sets of three shots each, my mouth was finally numb enough to have the dental work done. It was a terribly painful experience and I felt like I was run over by a truck. Childbirth may not have hurt as bad.

I left the dental office feeling a strange combination of relief, sadness, isolation and betrayal.

Once home, I made myself a healthy breakfast of two scrambled eggs, tomatoes and half an avocado. Off to my office I went to see my first client at 11AM.

Then something happened inside of me.

I had to go through the McDonalds Drive Thru near my office. I wasn’t hungry, but it felt like I was. I ordered and ate breakfast AGAIN! Small parts of me where craving to be soothed and connected to and seen. Usually I do that work myself, yet on this day, that need was out of my awareness. It didn’t take me long to feel horrified and ashamed of myself, along with tons of self-compassion and empathy to comfort the shame.

It makes perfect sense to me now. Feeling hunger when also feeling unseen, unloved or disconnected from other people translates into drive thru dining. Drive thru love. It isn’t a hunger for food, but a hunger for attunement. Small bits, crumbs if you will, of attunement. Just enough to keep a human soul alive.

As I finish this essay, I realize it’s been a month now since my full awareness of Drive Thru Love, and I haven’t been back to a drive thru. My intention is that this time, the awareness and shame empower me to begin speaking out.

Drive Thru Love is another nuanced aspect of a trauma survivors/dissociative persons system that can be so well hidden that even the most astute detective minded clinician can miss it. I missed it with several (that I know of) dissociative clients.

Mary (name changed) and I have been working together for two years and she experiences DID (Dissociative Identify Disorder). We meet each Monday morning, and honestly, it is the best start to my week. She works incredibly hard. It is an honor to be her therapist. She also struggles with significant mid-life weight gain. Our session together ends just about at lunch time. As we wrap up each week and I ask her where she is off to now, she typically says, “To the Chik Fil A for some waffle fries of hate and a diet coke”. Mary also identifies as transgender and struggles with the belief system of Chik Fil A. Her “Krew”, as she calls her parts, has more power and overrides her 2021 Adult Self boycott of Chik Fil A and leads her to the nearest drive thru a block from my office. Guess what we worked on in session last week? Shifting the Chik Fil A behavior to going home after therapy to make a healthy lunch. Mary did it.

Sometimes we really are just literally a step ahead of our clients. Many times, I am a step behind as well.

I have been noticing Drive Thru Love behavior all over the place with my clients and bringing it up in session. And yes, it’s tough to open that discussion. Tough for my clients. Tough for me. The toughest conversations in working with folks who have a dissociative response in life revolve around food, money and sex. Those are the deep dives that really need to happen. As clinicians, we need to start talking amongst ourselves how to make this happen. How to move beyond the surface level conversations around these topics to the deep reservoir of early hurt, pain and shame that drives the most secretive of patterns and behaviors and could even possibly keep our clients and ourselves from even better lives.

I plan to keep talking about these tough topics. Why? Because I am wondering if going to the toughest of places is where the juicy center of the healing is? I am wondering if the thwarted self-worth development can grow to look and feel as if 100% secure attachment and attunement had been healthy all along?

I am wondering for my clients and for myself.

90% healing isn’t good enough for me

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Seventeen years ago, I walked into therapy unsure of who I was. I walked out remembering who I am

Welcome to The Paradox of Therapy
Where story, therapy, and remembering who we are come together.

This is a space where lived experience and therapeautic wisdom meet. Where memoir and meaning sit side by side. Where we explore the beautiful tension between who we had to become to survive and who we have always been underneath it all.

It is also a place of community. Of shared humanity. Of curiosity, playfulness, and quiet joy. Often with a hint of mic drop wit and sarcasm. Healing does not have to be heavy all the time. Sometimes it is found in laughter, in tenderness, in being seen, and in remembering how to be alive with one another.

Who I am

I’m Amy Wagner—trauma and relationship therapist, consultant, teacher, and human who has lived this work from the inside out. My professional life has been devoted to helping people make sense of their nervous systems, their relationships, and their inner worlds. My personal life has taught me how layered, tender, and brave that work really is.

I write from the intersection of lived experience and professional practice. I believe both matter. One without the other feels incomplete.

Almost 18 years ago, when I began therapy for the first time (ever!), I was scared and confused. It was a brand new world of possibility, hope and painful uncovering. That uncovering was essential in allowing me to become the woman I am today.

I didn’t know then that therapy would become both a place of personal rescue and professional calling. I only knew that something in me was tired of carrying things alone, and something else was brave enough to wonder if a different way of living was possible. I walked in hoping to feel better. I walked out, slowly and over time, learning how to feel truer.

What I discovered was not that I was broken, but that I had been adaptive. Resourceful. Brilliant in how I learned to survive. Therapy gave me language for my nervous system, compassion for my younger self, and permission to soften in places that had stayed guarded for a very long time.

That early experience planted a quiet seed. It showed me that healing wasn’t about becoming someone new, but about remembering who I had been before the world asked me to be smaller, stronger, quieter, or different.

Years later, that remembering grew into a calling. I became a therapist not because I had arrived, but because I knew what it felt like to sit on the other side of the room, uncertain, hopeful, and brave enough to begin.

Today, I walk through the world with a quiet confidence and an open heart. My life is filled with a deep, steady joy that I share with my husband of over three decades, our adult children, and our golden retrievers (who are always shedding and somehow always worth it).

It’s a joy that feels earned, not perfect. Rooted in presence, humor, and a tenderness for how far we’ve all come.

What you’ll find here

My Substack is a blend of:

• Memoir and early stories

• Reflections from the therapy space I cultivate with my clients

• Gentle truths about trauma, attachment, and relationships

• Writing that honors the complexity of the human experience without pathologizing

• Language that centers remembering, not fixing

• Moments of lightness, humor, and relief with sprinkles of sass

Some posts will feel like quiet storytelling.
Some will feel like sitting across from a therapist who speaks plainly and kindly.
Some will surprise you with softness, playfulness, or a smile.

All of them are written with respect for the nervous system and the dignity of being human.

Why “The Paradox of Therapy”?

Because healing is full of paradox:
We are not broken, yet we seek healing.
We are resilient, yet we carry tender places.
We change by remembering.
We grow by making room for both grief and joy.

This space exists to hold all of that without rushing it.

A Place for Community

This is not meant to be a one-way conversation.
It is a gathering space.

A place where:

• We reflect together

• We soften together

• We learn from one another

• We make room for honesty, humor, and hope

Community is part of healing. Being witnessed matters. And sometimes simply knowing you are not alone changes everything.

Why This Might Be for You

Follow if you:

• Are curious about relationships, trauma and attachment through a human lens

• Love memoir that teaches without preaching

• Are a therapist, healer, or deep-feeler

• Want language for experiences you’ve felt but couldn’t name

• Believe (or would like to believe) healing includes play, warmth, and joy

• Are remembering who you are, slowly and kindly

  This isn’t content.
  It’s connection.
  It’s conversation.
  It’s a shared remembering.

You’ll find stories that begin quietly and open something larger.
Moments from childhood that echo into adulthood.
Truths that feel both grounding and freeing.
And reminders that healing can be spacious, creative, and even joyful.