Kallissa Bailey
https://www.goodreads.com/kallissabailey
“In Gretchen Schmelzer’s excellent, gentle book, Journey Through Trauma, she insists on the fifth page: “Some of you may choose a therapist: a psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, counselor, or member of the clergy. Some of you may choose some form of group therapy. But I am telling you up front, at the beginning: in order to heal, you will need to get help. I know you will try to look for the loophole in this argument—try to find a way that you can do this on your own—but you need to trust me on this. If there were a way to do it on your own I would have found it. No one looked harder for that loophole than I did.”[1]”
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
“Four months later, I got my diagnosis. And now that my past was spilling over, exploding, a volcano spewing hot toxic waste all over my present life, it was all I could think about.”
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
“In fact, some might argue that starting C-PTSD treatment by diving into the back of your closet and chasing out your scariest, most deeply buried skeleton is a terrible idea. You could find a murderous clown in the storm drain of your life, and he could start haunting your everyday existence. You could dig up something that triggers you badly and makes your symptoms worse or is so unpleasant to look at that you just quit therapy and never come back. That’s why many trauma therapists try to set up a strong framework of coping mechanisms before people launch into their foundational traumas.”
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
“You’ve interviewed sixty people who are estranged from their parents,” I stammered. “I don’t know if you have studies on it, but, um, in your experience—did the people who estranged themselves, did they feel free afterward?” “No,” Catherine said with certainty. I waited. There was nothing else.”
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
“Catherine was right. Estrangement is not freeing. It has not felt joyful. It has not been happy. It has only felt necessary, and even that is something I question all the time: Does this make me selfish? Does it make me cruel? Then I think of the Thao Nguyen lyric, You made a cruel kid. Come look what you did.”
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
― What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
The F-word
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— last activity Jan 16, 2026 02:23PM
This is our reading group for anybody who loves to read and identifies as a feminist. We'll be reading a variety of books that may fall into one of th ...more
Kallissa’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Kallissa’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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