✎ from the practice
Observations on the work of healing — written from the trail, the office, and the quiet in between.
“The surgery went fine. My heart was another matter. A field note on old trauma, corrective experiences, and the surprising resources that got me through, including a clump of cat fur.
Walking into a restaurant with no menu is baffling. So is trying to change your life with no sense of what your options even are. A first look at resourcing.
I have days when time seems to mosey along, like a river flowing slow and steady. And then there are other days when that same fifteen minutes evaporates before I’ve drawn a second breath. So which is it? Is time scarce or abundant? Crawling or sprinting? The answer, I’ve come to believe, is yes.
For years I was a world-class people-pleaser. The anger didn’t go anywhere. It just waited. A reflection on emotional repression, the body’s ledger, and what the Law of Conservation of Energy has to do with all of it.
A childhood memory of a dark, frightening road and a pet cemetery turned out to be something else entirely when I went back as an adult. What we carry from scary places often says more about who we were then than what was actually there.
When old wounds meet present pain, the current can become overwhelming — not because you’re overreacting, but because two rivers are flowing into one. A look at how trauma accumulates and what it means to begin separating them.
When a beloved cat died, something else went quiet too — a connection I hadn’t realized was bound up in the relationship until it was gone. A personal reflection on grief, stalled faith, and finding your way back.
Shel Silverstein’s children’s classic may be the most accurate portrait of codependency ever written — a story about giving that looks like love but ends in depletion. A close reading of what the tree was really doing, and why.
A winding path through Catholic school outsider-hood, a youth group candle, and a summer morning on Isle Royale where something found me that I’ve never been able to shake. A personal reflection on faith, doubt, and the relationship that keeps outlasting the labels.