At the age of 42, I’ve survived child abuse, kidnapping, being threatened with a knife, being threatened with a gun, panic disorder, major depression, a corporate career, graduate school and over twenty years of marriage. My husband is the light of my life and my children both have four legs. My mama’s not half bad either.
When I say that ‘I’ve been through it,’ I mean ‘IVE BEEN THROUGH IT!’
I have a bachelors in psychology, with a minor in children’s advocacy. I also have a masters in social work. Doesn’t make me an expert but it does mean that I know a thing or two.
If I haven’t lived it, I probably know someone who has. I’ve done a lot of volunteering and advocacy work. I’m proud of that, but it has taken a toll on my health and well being. Now I’m going to write in the hopes that it will help someone. If that person is you, great! If not, I hope someone else can.
Most blogs that come up when you search “how to heal from [the thing]” are going to lie to you. They’re going to lie about the timeline. They’re going to lie about how linear it is. They’re going to suggest you try gratitude journaling and a morning routine, and they’re going to leave you feeling worse than when you started reading.
This is not that.
This is a blog for people whose grief, breakup, illness, loss, betrayal, or formative trauma is no longer current news to anyone around them. Friends have stopped checking in. Family has started saying things like “it’s been a while now.” A therapist may have politely discharged you. But you — you are still flinching at things you didn’t know would flinch you. You are still rehearsing the version of yourself you present at dinner. You are still, at 11pm, doing the thing you promised yourself you’d stop doing.
I know because I am also there.
The premise of this blog is plain: you are not behind, you are not broken, and the timeline other people expect is not the timeline healing actually keeps. The research backs this up — what gets called “complicated grief” or “delayed-onset trauma response” or “post-traumatic growth” all happens on a clock that has nothing to do with whether your friends are still texting. The clinical literature has known this for decades. The people in your life mostly haven’t read it.
So this blog tries to do three things at once. It tells the truth about what stuckness looks like up close — the specific, sometimes embarrassing details that don’t make it into the recovery memoir. It pulls in what the research actually says, lightly, without lecturing. And it talks the way a friend would talk if your friend had read the literature and also been through it — direct, occasionally dry, never patronizing.
A few things this blog will not do.
It will not tell you everything happens for a reason. It will not tell you that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, because both of us know that’s an empirically false statement attributed to a man who had syphilis. It will not call your trauma your superpower. It will not assign you a “journey.” It will not put “just” in front of a suggestion, ever — justbreathe, just journal, just try to move on — because the word “just” erases how hard the thing actually is. It will not give you five tips to heal in a numbered list with an inspirational header image. Some of the most useful things I have learned took years to land, and they don’t fit on a square graphic.
A note on me: I write as S. Solomon. The name is partial on purpose. I’d rather have the freedom to tell the truth than the recognition that comes with full identification. I’m not selling a course. I’m not building a personal brand. I don’t have a transformation story I’m trying to monetize.
For what it’s worth on a blog like this, I also have a Master of Social Work. Which is to say: I have read the research, and I have lived underneath it. Both of those things matter here. Neither of them is the whole story. When I cite something from the literature, you can assume I have actually read it and that I am bringing it up because it would have helped me — not because it sounds professional. A lot of the time the research doesn’t help. That is part of what got me writing this.
Posts go up Tuesday and Friday mornings. Some are short. Some are long. None of them are sponsored.
If you’re new, the archive is the right place to wander. If something here makes you feel less alone, that’s the whole point. If something here makes you feel worse, tell me — there’s a contact page. I read everything.
— S. Solomon