The Medicine of Story

For those who are called to do it, writing about the body is a threshold crossing—and one not taken lightly. If our experiences offer one half of an initiation, the brave choice of writing about them completes the transformation.

Our experiences carry the medicine others need. But in order to tell raw, brutal stories of trauma in their most powerful form, we must not only command the craft of writing, but recognize and move through the spiritual invitations our process stirs up. This can mean working with mentors and healers to learn embodiment and confront nervous system activation, facing difficult truths about ourselves, persevering through murky stretches of disorientation, and developing a mature relationship to illness, sexuality, and death despite society’s deep fear of them. Showing up to the writing process changes us into clearer, braver, more vibrant versions of ourselves—which makes us a different kind of narrator.

Who we are as people is inextricable from who we show up as on the page. When we work on one, we inevitably grapple with the other.

As a trauma writing doula, I accompany nonfiction writers through the underworld process of extracting stories of trauma from the body and the challenge of building trauma narratives beautifully upon the page.

What does a trauma writing doula do?

Just as a birth doula walks beside a person in pregnancy—just as a death doula attends the dimming of another person’s time on the planet—I will be your guide as you enter the intimidating, chthonic process of birthing intensely-personal and painful stories.

In our initial session, I’ll get to know your writing project and learn more about what’s been getting in the way. Over time, we’ll:

• Pinpoint how writing interacts with your overadapted nervous system

• Push back against the shaming messages of family, friends, or the culture at large

• Use exercises adapted from clinical practice to safely crack open your most activating scenes

• Study the structures of existing trauma writing to gain ideas for working with fractured or incomplete memories

• Identify and arrange for the removal of spiritual entities that may be interfering with your ability to move forward as a storyteller

• Spot energetic patterns to your stuckness and apply spiritual solutions to writing problems

• Use deep conversations and co-regulation to tease out what remains to be written, creating assignments that minimize activation

• Hold spiritual conversations about your process you may not be able to have elsewhere in the writing world

• Revise toward publication, growing your sense of power over your story through smart craft choices and beautiful syntax

• Explore together what support you’ll need for your trauma narratives to enter the world

Trauma writing isn’t linear, and traditional goal-oriented approaches can often lead to people pushing their nervous systems in unhealthy ways. Together, we’ll cultivate the patience, spiritual maturity, and toolbox to work at the pace of integration.

How do you work?

I only walk beside a few clients at a time because of the emotionally and spiritually intensive nature of the work. New clients commit to a three-session $1000 package that includes one 75-minute introductory session and two 60-minute follow ups as well as the opportunity to turn in up to 15 double-spaced pages (12 pt. Times New Roman standard margins formatting). Introductory plans must be used in their entirety within six weeks and are not refundable. After this, clients who are invited into ongoing work create a plan with me specific to their project.

Do I need a trauma writing doula?

If you say that writing your trauma story is important to you, but keep procrastinating— if your story feels overwhelming and you don’t know how to break it down— if writing about your experiences ruins your quality of life or gets you stuck in fight, flight, or freeze— if you don’t have complete memories—if your story feels too dark or triggering to discuss in most writing groups—if your classmates or readers have suggested you’re not telling an honest version of the story or that your perpetrator characters are too black and white—if you’re able to write about unrelated topics, but freeze up when you try to tell this story— if telling your trauma story feels non-negotiable to you this lifetime—if it feels like your whole life is waiting for you on the other side of writing this— you may need a trauma writing doula.

Do you read my work as part of a session?

This depends entirely on where you are in your project and what’s a match for you. For many clients initially, sessions are a space for assessment, connection and brainstorming. Together we’ll build a container that can hold the weight of your story. We’ll find ways for you to keep moving forward despite the physiological and craft complexity of narratives like these. You’ll likely receive writing assignments and reading lists that help contextualize, challenge, and inspire your work. Because writing trauma usually involves a healing journey, we’ll increasingly attend to the spiritual dimensions of the questions you’re living, reaching towards other healing modalities at crucial moments in your writing journey. We design our work together based on where you are in your writing and what is happening in your spiritual life. If you’re not having trouble writing and would prefer to simply send me a trauma-related essay or book manuscript for feedback— without building a relationship for your ongoing work—you can book that here.

Will we set page and/or word goals?

It’s likely that you’ve been carrying a set of expectations around the pace and organization of what your writing life should look like. In our work together, we will push back against linear, capitalist ideas of how a book “should” be written; we will not be accountable to conventional concepts of productivity or achievement. (This is why I call myself a doula and not a coach.) You may find, in this process, that things take forever, then come all at once. Our work together may tendril; it may frustrate and soar. You might feel crazy. It is my job to remind you that crazy isn’t actually a thing, that everything you’re experiencing is a necessary step. It is my job to help you coax the work forward, read its signals, become the right home for it. I’ll inhabit the unknowns with you; we will carry this together. You must remember: What you are here to do is possible.

Who do you want to work with?

I seek to work with talented writers with both a strong foundation in creative writing generally and a specific nonfiction project already underway—writers who are willing and ready to show up to all of it. Those who benefit most from my guidance are open to learning about the energetic components of their stuckness and willing to apply spiritual solutions to their writing problems. I ask writers to commit to at least two sessions. Some writers work with me weekly for years, and some writers connect with me as-needed. I ask that all writers in my practice be in a working relationship with a mental health practitioner, ideally one trained in somatic experiencing. Trauma writing doula work is not intended to be a substitute for mental healthcare; I cannot offer round-the-clock response or crisis management. If you are currently in crisis, you are not a fit for this service.

What do I bring to the table?

I bring to this work more than 30 hours of trauma sensitivity training from the Arizona Trauma Institute, eight years teaching trauma writing and working one-on-one with clients, more than a decade as a sexuality educator, an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Arizona, and—most importantly—many brutal years of my own embodied writing work. I have walked this road.

Though we will talk a lot about the nervous system through the lens of Western medicine, I also bring to this work a deep relationship with many metaphysical traditions, and am energetically present with my clients in a way that sometimes includes channeling. I am in an ongoing process of completing shamanic initiation in the lineage of my ancestors, and bring both a humble awareness of my own limitations and a deep well of resourcing to my client relationships.

I am uniquely built to be able to hold space for enormous darknesses and deep grief. Whatever you’re carrying, I’m not afraid of it, and I’ll be regulated enough myself to help you find its ideal form on the page.

Who’s not eligible?

If you’re still currently living through the circumstances that caused your primary trauma, or if your current situation is so turbulent that you suspect you are accruing new trauma and living in a chronically activated state, adding trauma writing to your nervous system’s load may not be a healthy choice. Taking on trauma writing requires capacity and a sense of being resourced to manage what comes up. I work with writers who are basically in a safe and stable place, aware that facing the stories in their past is part of their route forward. If you’re in crisis (even if your current crisis is not related to the trauma you want to write about), I’m not the right practitioner with the right resources to help you.

Writers who are resistant to hearing about their writing life in spiritual and energetic terms may not find resonance in working with me. To me, trauma writing is inherently spiritual work, inviting you (requiring you!) to transform into the next version of yourself as you attend to the physiological, social, and craft problems of telling difficult stories.

What should I know about working with you?

Because I am a writer living with disability whose work requires a particular level of embodiment and spiritual grounding, my availability and timelines can feel different from other coaching or editorial relationships. My capacity changes often. I believe deeply in divine timing and say yes only when I mean yes, which doesn’t always line up with our linear, productivity-minded visions of how work should move. I say no when I think something’s not (or no longer) in alignment. Each session you purchase may only be rescheduled once. All sessions cancelled within 48 hours are forefeited. This helps writers learn what it looks like to prioritize writing energetically and concretely, within lifetimes where it can seem like something is always coming up.

Trauma Writing Services

The Trauma-Informed Creative Writing Classroom

I offer custom trainings on managing trauma in the creative writing writing classroom.

In a typical 6-hour sequence, we’ll begin with an overview of how trauma works in the body, how to recognize symptoms of trauma in the classroom, and what we know about the intersection between trauma and writing—how it can heal us and when it can break us. We’ll overview the best practices for syllabus disclaimers, tools for talking to students about their topical choices, and why content warnings are limited in their effectiveness. We’ll discuss the role of the writing teacher vs. the mental health practitioner, as well as the obligations of the facilitator in terms of self-regulation and structural awareness. We’ll explore shame as a form of trauma and a toxic presence in the creative writing workshop.

After a lunch break, we’ll proceed under the assumption that essays including traumatic material will show up in the pile, digging into the craft problems of the trauma essay in order to create familiarity and build a craft toolbox that prevents the content from eclipsing the form (and path forward in revision). We’ll overview issues like black-and-white characters, the fragmentation of memory, and cognitive disorganization, and discuss how to elevate a personal story toward the universal. We’ll keep an eye on how our feedback might land in an activated nervous system and overview what trauma-informed workshopping might look like. We’ll talk about how systemic racism factors into trauma in the classroom. And we’ll identify individual instructors’ own personal activations and any cultural beliefs that affect the way they respond to students (and take care of themselves).

Because we live in a society that is just beginning to understand what trauma is, because many instructors are living with over-activated nervous systems themselves, and because students are in many cases struggling to access mental healthcare and desperate for venues to explore their most devastating and charged experiences, I recommend leaving plenty of time for reflection, writing exercises, and conversations that allow faculty to fully take in this information and process their experiences.

Use the form below to apply to work with me. Because I’m dedicated to working with those who feel like the right fit at this moment, and because I seek to not book too far out, please know that submitting a request does not guarantee you’ll receive an invitation to book.

If it’s right, when the time is right, we will align.

What is Thyrsus?

You may see the word Thyrsus listed on some of my business materials. But what is it?

A thyrsus is a wand topped with a lantern-like pinecone— carried, mythologically, by both Hanael (the Archangel of Venus) and the Greek God Bacchus. Hana—the angel of joy, pleasure, and nature—makes beauty from wreckage. She helps us find pleasure in all circumstances. She makes fruitful what was barren. Bacchus is the god of wine, god of the forest, fertile, honeyed, ecstatic, trafficking in epiphanies and subverting the dour oppression of authority. He is the dying-and-rising god. Born of Persephone, he is also known to be half of the Underworld—chthonic and wild with darkness.

And so the thyrsus is a light bringer in the midst of the wild dark. That is what we do here: We make beauty from wreckage. We cross the bridge from carcass to shyly budding garden. As a business name, Thyrsus is a process of restoring aliveness to the body after trauma. It is a way of working with writers that grows their voices down into the wet soil, connecting them with the nourishment they need to blossom. Thyrsus is the lantern casting light on the path; it is an erotic reunion between writers and their worlds.

Upcoming Workshops: