Survivors of childhood trauma, what grounds you? What puts you in your body, gives you joy, reaffirms your strength? It changes for me, depending on the day, the mood, the weather within and without. It suddenly occurred to me that I needed a pair of ballet shoes. When I was young, my dance teacher demanded our ballet slippers be tight, too tight. They hurt until they broke. The good thing about being an adult is that you can choose your own shoes.

Should I value my life if no one else does? It is a lonely question. A question I have returned to repeatedly, as I, for example, severed ties with my family of origin, severed ties with my workplace of two decades, continue to sever ties with people and with institutions who were supposed to value my life but clearly do not. It is lonely, carrying my life and its value in my arms, like a herder with a single sheep.

Not allowed to speak my thoughts or show my feelings, I was driven by my family of origin into art. More like, taken, tied, threatened,...

Whenever I doubt myself, the continuity of my mind and my body, all I need to do is dance, turning and winding and bending and...

I think too much about goodness. Like any child I was taught that being good was ideal, “good” was what you should aspire too, “good” was...

I went to college unsure of myself. I had been driven underground by my own family, told again and again I was wrong, ugly, and stupid,...