“The anticipation and warning of an approaching atmospheric shift.”

The slow extraction of the secret begins with a flashback and the kind of heartbreak that splits a life cleanly into before and after.

It became less about the flashback itself unfolding... The strange, slow burn was more in the realization: 

Acknowledging something happened and understanding what that acknowledgment would cost are entirely different things.

(“A phenomenon where a mountain forces a storm to dump rain on one side, keeping the other side deceptively dry and protected.”)

A major event unfolds that marks the very first time I refused to carry violence alone... the first time I stopped cooperating with silence.

I believed that loudly saying no in the present might reach backward into everything I had survived silently before and somehow make it through the whole line and the generations of silence surrounding it all.

“If I tell just enough truth to heal, but not enough of the truth to expose the source and destroy familial belonging, maybe I could save everyone.”

I was wrong.

Metaphorically speaking: The mountain didn't protect the valley; the shadow side was already eroding with deceit.

And you cannot bargain with a storm.

(“The profound, heavy stillness left behind right after a massive storm front departs.”)

The rooms my family once filled would remain empty for years to follow, but their voices stayed loud long after they left. I could get lost in the liminal space where I’d finally arrived, floating away in what preceded it: not knowing whether the shame and grief would ever subside enough for a light to shine through on the truth.

It was here that I realized I was no longer the person I once was, but not yet the person I’d become. While always apart of me, I no longer needed protective, internal maps to survive or to speak. I won a legal battle where the truth was honored so loudly, I couldn’t believe I’d ever allowed certain family ties to cloud my perception of it all in the first place.

But I still didn’t know what language belonged to me without them.

(“an arc of concentric colored bands formed in the sky by the refraction, internal reflection, and dispersion of the sun's light through rain or other water droplets in the atmosphere”)

FIELD NOTES FROM THE CLOUDS

is a complimentary digital gift filled with a unique selection of guiding artwork, reflections, clinical research and pieces of literature that supported me in really impactful ways. It was created for the attendees of the Writing the World Forward Summit, and in the special honoring of survivors of childhood sexual abuse and their loved ones. But its components can be applied to any person or life experience.

I found myself overwhelmed for others inside my own story so often. I noticed a common thread that connected every person and story I encountered along the way: 

The reactions and collapse survivors blamed themselves for were predictable adaptations of the body’s nervous system, not evidence of failure, flaw, defect or weakness.

It perpetually brought me back to one universal question: how do we live honestly and heal when surrounded by systems that prioritize their stability over accuracy? And when that system is your own family, where does safety live?

There is really no guidebook for the aftermath of truth exposure. But the cost doesn’t make it less true. No amount of cognitive dissonance changes the fact that you survived childhood sexual abuse. Nobody has the right to claim authority over what happened to you to protect themselves instead. That response to the truth is irrevocably and tragically heartbreaking, but it has actually nothing at all to do with you.

What is too often denied and punished is not the abuse itself, but the person willing to name it.

There are many conversations about surviving trauma, yet far fewer about surviving the cost of truth.

The field notes were created for navigating that space. It’s everything I wish I had known, everything I wish someone knew how to say to me and a touch of real wisdom from the one analyst who did. Its purpose is to help you set the weight down long enough to make sense of the experience, separate truth from survival response, and choose how much you want to pick back up. You’re the only authority of that.

You cannot bargain with a storm.
But you can decide to shine a light on what was underneath it all along. 🌈