I grew up as the only child of a mother with Dissociative Identity Disorder—and experienced abuse that mirrored hers. Years later, I became a psychotherapist specializing in “parts” work with adult survivors of childhood trauma.
Was I trying to save her? Maybe. But more than anything, I was trying to understand how to come home to myself.
Calling All Parts Home: From Traumatic Fragmentation to Radical Belonging is my story—and a reflection on a question I believe many of us are asking:
How do we create internal trust and kindness when our trauma-saturated parts are constantly triggered—by each other, by us, and by the world?
Calling All Parts Home: From Traumatic Fragmentation to Radical Belonging is a cross-genre memoir that weaves together personal narrative, clinical theory, and mindfulness-based practice. It’s a book about surviving childhood trauma—and learning to live, love, and lead as a whole person.
This book is a deep bow to the therapeutic models and Buddhist mindfulness practices that helped me address a confounding question: Just how do I and others create an internal atmosphere of kindness and trust when all our trauma-saturated, survival-focused parts are perpetually triggered by each other, by us, and by every other human?
Structured in three parts—People, Parts, and Practice—the book maps out my internal healing and the tools that supported it:
The story begins the day after my mother’s death, as I sort through her psychiatric journals and face the echoes of our shared trauma. I revisit formative relationships—from caregivers to pets—and explore the early lessons I learned about the risks and rewards of belonging.
Here I introduce Janina Fisher’s TIST model, and offer a clinical map of trauma-generated survival parts. While I include a few client stories, I primarily share my own: parts that protected, performed, avoided, or fought to survive. Each one comes alive on the page with nuance and humanity.
This final section is a love song to the many beautiful practices that have shaped my healing and professional life. From Vipassana meditation to TIST techniques, yoga and the daily challenges of showing up in relationships. It’s an honest look at what healing actually requires.
Woven through the three sections are six imagined conversations with my late mother. These “Conversation Interludes” offer a structural throughline for the book as they traverse the distance between fractured defensiveness and sweet repair.
In a world unraveling from collective trauma and systemic disconnection, this story offers a timely and intimate mirror.
We can’t build a safer outer world until we make peace with our inner one.
I’m a psychotherapist specializing in parts work with adult survivors of complex trauma. My practice is deeply informed by Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment (TIST), Buddhist mindfulness, and over two decades of lived experience navigating inner fragmentation and repair.
Calling All Parts Home is my first book. It’s both a personal reckoning and a professional offering. I wrote it for the parts of us that were never meant to survive, but did.