#trauma-narrative

#trauma-narrative

When my youngest foster daughter was in treatment for her severe eating disorder, one of her therapies involved writing a trauma narrative. In 11 single-spaced, both sides, she documented all the obstacles she had overcome in her young life: the death of her father, her mother's alcoholism. Then, in what her counselor called a destruction ceremony, she shredded her words, stuffed them into balloons, and set them sailing on her way outside of the residential treatment facility where she was living at the time.