Writing Through Grief & Trauma

Choose from a one-hour Writing Through Grief & Trauma session or sign up for a writing subscription with trauma-informed writer Amy Delcambre. Talk to a compassionate, experienced, and empathetic author, editor, and publisher who used writing to heal her own grief and trauma and can help you start using writing on your grief journey. Delve into what is keeping you stuck in suffering as you are guided to heal through your own words.

My Story of How I Healed from Grief, Trauma, & Abuse

Trauma easily gets stuck because we are often told our feelings don’t matter, or we don’t have time to deal with what has happened to us. Trauma shows up in responses, often antisocial ones. In Internal Family Systems therapy models, it’s understood that people have “manager” and “firefighter” responses to trauma. Managers aim to control the impacts of trauma while firefighter responses are used to numb or diffuse trauma. These are protectors against your “exiles”—the parts of you that you avoid looking at due to trauma.

I know from experience how these things can hold you back as a writer and as a person. It’s extremely frustrating. It can be difficult to jump start your life again after a trauma. Life hit the brakes hard for me throughout my 30s. First, in 2014, my only son, my second child, Jude, was stillborn at 33 weeks the day after Christmas. Then fewer than five years later, my wonderful husband died very unexpectedly from cancer caused by prolonged and known hexavalent chromium exposure at the 403rd at Keesler AFB when he was 34. Losing Sean, my husband, and choosing to live again was the hardest decision I’ve ever made, and I almost ended my life more than once. In the ensuing years following my husband’s death, I used a variety of tools to heal all of the parts of me that emerged to reveal trapped trauma, which included what was diagnosed as complex grief and C-PTSD as a consequence of Sean’s death and my suddenly becoming a single mother to three daughters then 19 months, 3 1/2, and 6.

My eating disorder, insecurities, low self-esteem, anxiety, and alcohol use disorder all emerged in a torrent, and I felt very much like I was in my early 20s again. Indeed, my husband had been my anchor, and I was—as I put it—unmoored. Though we used CBT, one of my therapists and I used a system that is very much in the vein of Internal Family Systems therapy where I wrote to my eating disorder as if it was an entity outside of me. This incredibly productive work proved effective, and I have not struggled with that issue since.

Widowhood is a unique form of trauma in that many people make assumptions that tend to be shaming. We are desperate for companionship but are not ready to move on. In fact, one of the hardest aspects of losing a spouse—or anyone who is close to you or whose death is untimely or sudden, is that you freeze in that moment in time. While the world moves on around you, you cannot move. And it’s the shock, I feel, of a loss, that makes death so traumatic, even if it’s anticipated. I was naive and vulnerable and predictably got into a relationship with someone who was psychological, emotionally, and verbally abusive. These were not the only kinds of abuse that manifested in this unhealthy relationship. I didn’t leave because I felt like I deserved it. I had very real survivor’s guilt. My vice, my “firefighter” in the IFS model, was drinking, which my then-partner took personally, unable to understand why I couldn’t just stop.

I read an inordinate number of books that helped me tremendously. At the behest of my holistic therapist, I read about meditation and learned to meditate. I have since led guided meditations for inner peace, transcendence, and full mind / body / soul attunement as well as done card readings, which, yes, I eventually got into that, too, as my journey took a “spiritual” arc. I found a great deal of solace in forgiveness. Gratitude practices helped as well.

Despite the abuse, criticism, and negativity as well as lack of emotional support from my parents and my partners, I was raising my energetic vibration, which is a scientifically proven form of quantum physics that is powerfully transformative. The Heart Math Institute provides a chart to explain the various levels. In David Hawkins’ Letting Go, I discovered the simplicity of “letting go”, though, it’s easier said than done, and being able to “put things down” involved learning to change my mind about myself, my value, and my purpose.

I learned how to use my external environment to inform me about my internal one, which enabled me to begin making conscious changes. When my esteem reached the point of courage, I was able to escape that relationship, and when I left, I was done. Despite the relationship being over, that individual stalked me, having friends follow me and report on where I was. He was continually critical and judgmental, calling me crazy, and making threats for nearly half a year after our relationship ended despite my blocking him and requesting he not communicate with me. My writing on the topics of escaping abusive partners, reparenting and setting boundaries with parents who are hurtful toward their adult children, and antisocial personality disorders that tend to include behaviors that are narcissistic compelled a great deal of negative attention online from those who perpetuate those behaviors. Though, it also gained support and positive attention.

It was incredibly challenging but also very informative, and I am grateful for how I used a negative situation to grow constructively to such an extent that people became to ask how I did it—how did I change my life.

I’m offering this not because I believe I have the answers but because I know I have tools. I have a lot of knowledge and experience and a fervor for psychology.

I am a writer, and I used writing to heal, however, any kind of art can be used to heal. Referring back to the vibrational levels of energy, it’s proven that when we are in flow state, “the zone”, we ascend to a higher level of conscious awareness. This is when you are writing or painting or playing music and you’re so dialed into what you’re doing that the world vanishes away from you. This is a healing state of creation is how you self-heal. Humans are self-healing organisms. I went around the world metaphorically-speaking to realize that we already have all of the answers we need, and like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, you know how to get home all along. You just had to find the power within yourself to return to you, the authentic, joy-filled, enlightened, and empowered you.

That’s what I want to give you in this experience and why I am doing it. I suffered a great deal, and I realize that most of that was because of the way I thought and felt. Once I learned that I was the master of my thoughts and how to control them, I realized the truth of this statement my friend made during an exchange.

I said, “Suffering is inevitable.”

He replied. “No. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.”

And indeed—pain cannot be avoided. Suffering, however, is prolonging the pain because we cannot or will not let go of what which has left us or isn’t for us or was put upon us by someone else but that is not ours to carry. I want to help. A big part of my personal purpose is to help people eliminate needless suffering, so they can live the life they deserve and desire.

What I did, what I’m happy to share, set me free. I want for you to come on that journey of receiving mental and emotional freedom with me.

Who is this for?

Anyone who needs a compassionate ear and tools and resources to help themselves. We really do have to rescue ourselves, but luckily, there are helpers.

Anyone willing to suspend disbelief in what they think they know and explore new modalities for healing. (I had to empty my cup, so I could fill it with new things. Rigidity is part of what keeps us stuck in trauma / grief / suffering.)

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