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Step Back From the Cauldron
I loved my early twenties, the years of working in a city office and building a life with my husband that felt entirely ours. My days were full. I poured my mind into getting work done for my lawyer boss, then as if flicking a switch, I’d head home into a life that felt easy and chosen. Bands on weekends. Long walks through national parks. Dinner somewhere simple. It was a good rhythm, and I didn’t notice until much later how little time I spent with my family of origin. That was deliberate, although I couldn’t see it then. I had set myself free. Maybe it was also because we…
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It’s Not Your Fault, It’s Not Your Fault, It’s Not Your Fault
I Wondered If He Was Speaking to Me! I’ve been busy creating lately and needed to stop for a few days. I found myself flicking through one of the books I bought at the Australian Childhood Foundation’s International Childhood Trauma Conference in August down in Melbourne. It’s titled Living Like Crazy by Professor Paul Gilbert. The title looks healthy, crazily enough! I had put my notes from his talk inside the book, my way of making me connect what I’d heard in the seminar. The seminar had hit home and that was the reason I bought two of his books, Living Like Crazy and the smaller Compassion-Focused Therapy, to understand…
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Understanding the Context: Family Dynamics
Alice Perle (pen name) shares reflections on context, family dynamics, and the resolve to keep going and to keep growing. Survivors and others affected by SSA, often carry a unique kind of silence, not just from the harm or abuse itself, but from trying to safely navigate the dynamics within the family that surrounded it. Beyond disclosure, the issues that compound trauma begin, especially when families are unsupported, and disclosures come in adult life, not in childhood. In the sub-title of Resolve are the words ‘healthy inquiry’, because it felt healthy, to go squirrel around, to understand what I could, then take it in and see if that mattered to…
