It’s been a few months since I wrote my last blog. There’s just so much happening in the world today. We live in this world on multiple levels, from the most personal to the most global. It feels like the global is becoming so personal, on top of our already personal lives and issues, so where do we get to breathe and have space while there are multiple assaults on our democratic system as we know it, and it feels like the safeguards we’ve counted on in the past are being systematically dismantled?

As a writer, it is important for me to periodically post on social media, and so, I also sometimes scroll through pictures and reels. In just doing so earlier, I became physically sickened by the breadth of disturbing negative information. As a psychotherapist and a trauma-informed one, I know that one of the most important things we can do to protect ourselves is to take in stressors in small pieces so we can best metabolize them, as when too much is coming at us, we often shut down, becoming emotionally and physically exhausted.

I am a bit behind in watching the television series The Diplomat. I’m on Season 3 out of 4. In the episode I watched last night, the character Hal, Kate, the American Ambassador to England’s husband, and now VP of the United States, (sorry for any spoilers) is trying to contain a political disaster with England. He gives the following example to demonstrate that the best way to contain the affair is to just do and say nothing, stating, “If your child falls, they look at you to see how you’ll respond. If you say nothing, they won’t react.” He concludes that they should do nothing. The Secretary of State responds, “And what if that child is in a car accident?”

You don’t need to be a psychotherapist to know that a child doesn’t have to be in a car accident to have a significant physical and emotional reaction; they can just fall. If we don’t respond to the child, even if they don’t appear physically hurt, that doesn’t mean they weren’t scared by what just happened. By ignoring the event, no matter how small, the child is given the message that what just happened doesn’t matter, and that they don’t matter, thus invalidating the child. I couldn’t stop thinking about this poorly construed dialogue. It made me consider the current state of our lives at this time in history. There is so much being thrown at us, and just because we may not be validated about our reality, doesn’t make it any less harmful. In fact, it makes it worse. While we may be able to speak out and protest at times, there is so much disinformation, disagreement, and overwhelm that we all need to validate this reality for ourselves and one another, in addition to increasing self-care and compassion.

How does this relate to my writing process? It’s now been eighteen months since Klara’s Truth–A Novel first came out, and I am currently working on a prequel, for now named Artifacts-A Novel, for which I just signed a contract with She Writes Press to be published in the Fall of2027. I’m not sure. I’ve never before lived through as much chaos as we are currently living through. I know that my message in both books highlights how early and later traumas shape our lives and who we become, and how the significance of connection with those we care about, as well as their validation, matters tremendously. I hope that in this new year, we can all deepen our connections to one another, validate our individual and collective experiences, and show ourselves and each other more compassion and grace. Now more than ever, we need each other.