I’m April. I’m 32 and from Canada. I am a trauma survivor, and hope to offer support and validation to other trauma survivors. Please read my pinned post for more info. My personal is aprilthebookqueen
I love asks for validation, advice, or peer support, but I can’t answer everything
I don’t answer diagnostic questions (like “Do I have PTSD?”)
Please know I may clear my inbox sometimes to protect my mental health
About My Approach to Asks I try to answer even difficult or hurtful asks with compassion because that’s the tone I want for this blog. I assume good faith, knowing that if an ask wasn’t in good faith, responding kindly still denies them the reaction they were hoping for.
If an ask genuinely upsets me, I block and delete it. I only respond to the ones I feel safe answering. So if you see me reply to something that seems harsh, know that I’m okay and I’m choosing to handle it this way intentionally.
Optional Support (a couple people have asked): [Ko-fi link] | [My Fidget Toy Business] (never expected, always appreciated!)
Want to keep up on my progress for The Weight We Carry? Besides following my blog for my books @writingwithapril....
I'll be updating this spreadsheet as I work!
For those of you who want a better idea of what will actually be in the book, or who want to offer suggestions, feedback, or comments, I've put the current Table of Contents with a brief description of each chapter below the read more. Fair warning: it's lengthy.
I'm especially interested in hearing whether you notice any gaps. Is there an aspect of living with trauma you wish was acknowledged more often? Is there something you think belongs within one of these chapters? Is there something you're particularly excited to see me talk about? I can't promise I'll be able to incorporate every suggestion, but I'd genuinely love to hear what other survivors would like to see represented.
One important note about the scope of the book: The Weight We Carry is heavily informed by my own lived experience with trauma and years of working on healing. I won't be getting into specific trauma-related disorders as part of this book. I may mention my own experiences where they're relevant, but I want to keep the focus on trauma itself, how it can affect us, and navigating coping, relationships, and healing.
Now, if you're prepared for a long Table of Contents... read on.
The Weight We Carry: Current Table of Contents
I've been working away on The Weight We Carry, my book about trauma, survival, coping, and healing, and I wanted to share the current Table of Contents!
This is still a work in progress, which means things may move, titles may change, and I may realize I need to add something along the way. But this is what the book looks like right now.
I also genuinely want feedback from other trauma survivors. Is there something you think is missing? An experience, response, relationship issue, or part of healing you don't see represented here? Please feel free to tell me. Some suggestions may fit into other chapters, and perhaps there are other chapters I need to add.
Before Part One
Author's Note
A little context before we begin, including what this book is, what it isn't, and what I hope you take from it.
Introduction
How to use the book, including reflection questions, optional activities, and the Recovery Toolkit you'll build throughout it.
My Story
A completely optional look at my own experiences with trauma and healing, and some context for where my perspective throughout this book comes from. This section will include clear content warnings and can be skipped without missing anything you need for the rest of the book.
Part One: Understanding Trauma
Before we can talk about living with trauma or healing from it, I want to talk about what trauma actually is, including some of the misconceptions that can make survivors question their own experiences.
Chapter 1: What Trauma Actually Is
What we mean when we talk about trauma, and why trauma is about more than simply what happened.
Chapter 2: Does My Trauma Count?
For everyone who has ever wondered whether what happened was “bad enough,” compared themselves to other survivors, or felt like they didn't have the right to call themselves traumatized.
Chapter 3: Different Types of Trauma
Trauma doesn't come from one kind of experience. We'll talk about different forms of abuse as well as experiences such as medical trauma, parentification, and other sources of trauma that can sometimes be overlooked.
Chapter 4: How Trauma Can Affect the Brain and Body
Trauma can change the way our brains and bodies respond to the world, but those changes don't necessarily have to be permanent. Healing can shape us too.
Chapter 5: Why People Respond Differently
There is no single “correct” trauma response. We'll talk about numbness, delayed reactions, dissociation, feeling strangely fine, reporting or not reporting, and why two people can experience similar events very differently.
Chapter 6: Trauma Misconceptions
Breaking down some of the things survivors are constantly told, from how a “real” survivor should behave to victim blaming, minimizing trauma, complicated feelings about abusers, and being told we should consider ourselves “lucky” things weren't worse.
Part Two: Living With Trauma
This section is about what trauma can actually look like in everyday life, including responses that aren't always recognized as being connected to trauma.
Chapter 7: Flashbacks
Flashbacks aren't only vivid visual memories. We'll talk about visual, auditory, emotional, and body flashbacks, as well as experiences that combine several of these.
Chapter 8: Triggers
What triggers are, why they don't always make logical sense, and why being triggered doesn't mean you've failed at healing.
Chapter 9: Hypervigilance
When your brain has learned to stay alert for danger, it can keep searching for threats even when you're no longer in the situation that taught it to do so.
Chapter 10: Dissociation
From feeling outside your body during trauma to subtler experiences of disconnection, fog, lost time, and feeling detached from your own life.
Chapter 11: Nightmares
Why trauma can follow us into sleep, what trauma-related nightmares can look like, and the impact they can have long after we wake up.
Chapter 12: Hypersexuality & Sex Repulsion
Sex repulsion is a commonly recognized trauma response, but hypersexuality can be one too. We'll talk about both, moving between them, the shame surrounding them, and how you can develop either from any trauma, not just sexual trauma.
Chapter 13: Missing an Abuser
One of the most complicated things to admit can be that you miss someone who hurt you. We'll talk about love, attachment, trauma bonds, good memories, dependency, and why missing someone doesn't mean what they did was okay.
Chapter 14: Shame & Guilt
The shame and guilt survivors can carry about what happened, how they responded, how they coped, how their trauma affected others, and even whether they reported what happened.
Chapter 15: Self-Blame
Maybe you didn't see the red flags. Maybe you did see them and ignored them. Maybe there are choices you'd make differently today. Regretting a choice doesn't make someone else's decision to hurt you your fault.
Chapter 16: Avoidance
Avoidance isn't automatically unhealthy. Sometimes avoiding something is a reasonable boundary; other times avoidance can slowly make our lives smaller. We'll talk about that difference without treating confronting every trigger as a requirement for healing.
Chapter 17: Fight, Flight, Freeze & Fawn
These aren't only things our bodies do during trauma. Old survival responses can show up later during conflict, panic, stress, or situations that feel threatening, even when we're currently safe.
Chapter 18: Anger After Trauma
Anger isn't inherently bad. It can tell us something was wrong, help put blame where it belongs, or motivate meaningful action. What matters is what we do with that anger.
Chapter 19: Grieving What Was Lost
Trauma can involve real loss even when nobody died: childhood, safety, trust, health, relationships, opportunities, identity, and even the person we wonder whether we could have been. Moving forward doesn't require pretending those losses weren't real.
Part Three: Relationships After Trauma
Trauma doesn't happen in a vacuum. It can affect how we trust, communicate, set boundaries, experience intimacy, ask for help, and connect with other people.
Chapter 20: Trust
What happens when experiences that taught you people weren't safe follow you into relationships where you want to trust again.
Chapter 21: Boundaries
Creating, communicating, and enforcing boundaries, including what happens when other people don't like them or try to get around them.
Chapter 22: Healthy Communication
Direct communication, saying what you actually need instead of relying on hints, taking accountability, understanding intent versus impact, and learning that healthy relationships can still have conflict. (This section won't be huge since it's a HUGE part of my BPD book, but I will mention things briefly and then direct to a free resource for that book since the communication advice in it isn't just relevant to BPD).
Chapter 23: People Pleasing
When keeping other people happy starts feeling connected to keeping yourself safe.
Chapter 24: Dating After Trauma
Navigating dating when past experiences may affect trust, safety, vulnerability, boundaries, and how you approach new relationships.
Chapter 25: Intimacy After Trauma
Sex, consent, readiness, triggers, communication, changing needs, and navigating intimacy in ways that respect both your trauma and your autonomy.
Chapter 26: Talking About Trauma
Deciding whether, when, and how to tell someone about your trauma, along with the importance of being believed and what meaningful validation can actually look like. Also will talk about the stigma of talking about it.
Chapter 27: Feeling Like a Burden
What happens when needing support makes you feel like you're too much for the people you love, and making room for the possibility that sometimes we are burdens, but that doesn't mean we aren't burdens worth carrying.
Chapter 28: Supporting Someone with Trauma
How to listen, validate, support, and be there for someone without trying to control their healing or forcing them into the response you think they should have. (Also planning to have this as a separate resource on my website for people to share to those that might find it useful.)
Part Four: Coping, Healing & Moving Forward
Understanding why we respond the way we do matters. But eventually we also need things we can actually do. This section focuses more heavily on coping, support, healing, and building a life that has room for who we are now.
Chapter 29: Grounding Techniques
Different ways to reconnect with the present when trauma pulls you away from it, because not every grounding technique works for every person.
Chapter 30: Panic Attacks
Understanding and coping with panic when your body is sounding an alarm, including what can help during and after an episode.
Chapter 31: Safe Spaces
Creating a sense of safety that works for you, whether that's an entire room, a small corner, a digital space, or something else entirely.
Chapter 32: Self-Care Boxes
Building a collection of comforting, grounding, and useful things that are easy to reach for when you're struggling.
Chapter 33: Types of Therapy
An approachable look at different forms of therapy and support, along with finding someone who feels like a good fit for you.
Chapter 34: Journalling
Using writing as one possible way to process feelings, notice patterns, communicate with yourself, and support healing without pretending journalling is right for everyone.
Chapter 35: Flashback Plans
Creating a plan for what to do when a flashback happens so you don't have to figure everything out while you're already overwhelmed.
Chapter 36: Crisis Plans
Preparing for difficult periods while you have the capacity to think about what Future You might need.
Chapter 37: Traumaversaries
When particular dates, seasons, holidays, or times of year carry trauma with them, including ways to prepare for and navigate those periods.
Chapter 38: Why Healing Can Feel Harder Than Before
Why finally becoming safe can sometimes make you feel worse, why calm can feel wrong after chaos, and why difficult feelings emerging during healing don't necessarily mean you're going backwards.
Chapter 39: The Reality of Healing
Healing isn't fair, linear, or necessarily about fully “moving on.” We'll also talk about forgiveness, including why you don't owe it to anyone in order to heal.
Chapter 40: Building a Life After Trauma
Moving beyond simply surviving and figuring out how to build a life that works for the person you are now, including making room for bad days, comfort, support, joy, goals, and whatever healing realistically looks like for you.
Chapter 41: A Letter to You
One final letter from me to you before you close the book.
This is a big book, and I know there are experiences that won't necessarily need their own chapter but could absolutely deserve space within one.
So this is where I'd really love input from other survivors:
What do you wish trauma recovery books talked about more?
You don't need to share your trauma or anything personal to suggest a topic. Even something as simple as “I'd like to see more about ___” is helpful.
I can't promise I'll include every suggestion, and I want to keep the book within the scope of what I can responsibly speak about. But I would genuinely love to know your thoughts!
Throughout the book, there will also be a Recovery Toolkit Add In section! If you are interested in doing it, throughout the book, you will be gradually guided to add to it in some chapters with specific instructions or ideas.
I miss when I could just "delete" replies on posts. Sometimes it doesn't feel block worthy, but the reply could be upsetting for people checking replies and I'd rather not see it.
Not sure when this changed, but kind of sucks it did.
Edit: Looks like I can on the app, just not the browser. Weird.
Edit again: oh I feel dumb… you have to manually switch to the blog the post is on. I swear it used to be just something you could do.
I'm working on my book (I know, again), and ended up writing this: If visualization doesn't work for you, whether because of aphantasia (being unable to produce images in your mind) or simply because your brain isn't interested in cooperating with “picture a peaceful beach”
And it made me think a bit lol. Aphantasia is a term I learned a few years ago, and I've seen it take off recently and is more well known.
But how many other people were completely lost in those exercises you had to do in school sometimes, or in therapy where they said close your eyes and imagine a peaceful place? They'd literally sometimes walk me through each detail and I was like... I hate this. It's just black.
(Aphantasia is a scale, but for me, it's completely black.)
Every time I write a post about someone feeling loved by their abuser, I inevitably get comments saying, “But if they abused you, it can't be love.”
And I understand the desire to believe that. If that narrative helps you process what happened to you, that's completely okay. But I do think we can run into problems when we push that narrative onto everyone else.
For one thing, it can make survivors question whether what they experienced was actually abuse.
But they really loved me. If they loved me, it couldn't have been abuse... right?
We tend to talk about abusers in very black-and-white terms. They're evil. They're monsters. They never cared about the people they hurt. And please don't put words in my mouth here. I am not saying abusers are good people, that abuse should be excused, or that they shouldn't face consequences for what they've done.
I'm saying that when we paint abusers as clear-cut villains who couldn't possibly love someone, we can make real-life abuse harder to recognize. Real people are more complicated than that.
Abuse is not an act of love. But I don't believe abusing someone necessarily means a person is incapable of loving them.
An abuser may genuinely believe they love the person they're hurting. They may care about them. They may have good moments with them. None of that makes their behaviour less abusive.
And I think this distinction can matter for people who are engaging in harmful behaviour, too.
Some abusive behaviours are learned. Some people grow up seeing unhealthy or abusive relationship dynamics and repeat them. That does not make the behaviour okay. It doesn't mean the people they hurt have to forgive them, stay with them, or wait around for them to change. Once again, explanation is not excuse. It is still that person's responsibility to recognize their behaviour, take accountability for the harm they've caused, and change it.
But sometimes, “If you loved them, you wouldn't do this” isn't what gets through to someone. They believe they love them. Instead, they may need to hear, “Loving someone doesn't make the way you're treating them okay.”
I have BPD. If you follow my @borderlinereminders blog, you already know that.
Part of what BPD meant for me was that I used to manipulate people. It wasn't malicious. I wasn't sitting there plotting how to control someone. It was a coping mechanism I had developed to reassure myself that people cared about me and weren't going to leave.
And it still wasn't okay.
I had to learn that why I was doing something didn't erase what it was doing to someone else. My intentions mattered for understanding my behaviour, but they didn't erase its impact. I could genuinely love someone and still behave in ways that hurt them. Recognizing that didn't mean accepting that I was secretly an awful person who had never cared about anyone. It meant accepting that loving someone does not automatically mean you're treating them well.
I think we need room for that nuance when we talk about abuse.
You can believe someone loved you and still call what they did abuse. You can believe there were genuine feelings between you and still leave. You can recognize someone's humanity without excusing the harm they caused.
Someone's feelings for you don't make their behaviour okay. Their intentions don't erase their impact. And you don't have to prove that they never loved you in order to acknowledge that they hurt you.
You are allowed to say, “I believe they loved me, and what they did to me was still abuse.”
I'm currently writing the Missing An Abuser chapter in my book The Weight We Carry.
I just wrote a line that I think is important.
Two things can be true at once. There were moments that were good, and the abuse was still abuse.
Abusers aren't necessarily abusive every moment. There may have been times you were happy with them. You may have laughed together, felt loved, or genuinely enjoyed being around them.
Those moments don't mean you were wrong to leave. They don't mean you're wrong to call what happened abuse. They don't cancel out the harm someone caused you.
Sometimes part of processing abuse is learning to hold both truths at once. There were good moments. And what they did to you was still not okay.
Find Me Elsewhere: Facebook | Instagram | My Trauma Website
The painful irony is that minimizing your trauma doesn't make it hurt less. It often just means you end up carrying it alone. (And you don't deserve to carry it alone.)
Find Me Elsewhere: Facebook | Instagram | My Trauma Website
If you've spent years asking yourself whether your trauma was "bad enough," I hope you'll begin asking yourself a different question instead. How did it affect me? Because that's the question that I found led to my healing.
You never needed to win a competition you didn't know you were competing in. Your pain was never required to reach some invisible threshold before it deserved compassion.
What happened to you mattered because it mattered to you. And that's enough.
Find Me Elsewhere: Facebook | Instagram | My Trauma Website
I've had a few people ask how my upcoming trauma book is coming along, so I thought I'd share my current table of contents!
Like my BPD book, I'm using years of existing writing as a foundation, then expanding, combining, reorganizing, and adding a lot of brand new material to turn it into a cohesive book. Every chapter also includes new reflection questions, activities, Recovery Toolkit additions, and more.
The built from use the titles of blog posts on my website (www.fortraumasurvivors.com) that I am using as a base for the chapters, or to take ideas from. I noted (website pages) for ones that aren't coming from blog posts, but pages on my website.
I'd like to note that I am building on these blog posts. For example, the Intimacy After Trauma blog post was 1,800 words and the final chapter is 5,800. I am using my blog posts as starting points. I put a lot of work into my blog posts, but for an actual book chapter, they're lacking lol.
Key
[Done] = Rough draft complete (awaiting final edits)
[Writing] = Currently writing
[Planning Complete] = Chapter outlined and relevant blog posts noted
[Planned] = Planned, but not yet developed
I'll come back and edit and update this post as stuff is completed, or planning changes, etc.
The Weight We Carry
[Done] Author's Note
[Done] Introduction
[Planned] My Story (Brief chapter about where I'm coming from when I write this book.)
Part One: Understanding Trauma
[Done] Chapter 1: What Trauma Actually Is
Built from: About Trauma (website page)
[Done] Chapter 2: Does My Trauma Count?
Built from: Was It Bad Enough?, Trauma Imposter Syndrome
[Planning Complete] Chapter 3: Different Types of Trauma
Drawing from: Specific Trauma Experiences (website page), Medical Trauma, Parentification, and maybe some of Grooming in Adult Relationships (I also have more planned to describe different types of trauma such as other trauma experiences and types of abuse. It's just not "pre written")
[Planning Complete] Chapter 4: How Trauma Can Affect the Brain and Body
Drawing from: The Subtle Ways Trauma Can Show Up in Everyday Life
[Planning Complete] Chapter 5: Why People Respond Differently
Drawing from: Trauma Responses (website page), personal stories
[Planning Complete] Chapter 12: Hypersexuality & Sex Repulsion
Drawing from: Hypersexuality & Sex Repulsion
[Writing] Chapter 13: Missing an Abuser
Drawing from: Why Do I Love and/or Miss My Abuser?, Trauma Bonding, You Can Understand the Abuse and Still Miss Them, Why People Stay in Abusive Relationships
[Planning Complete] Chapter 14: Shame & Guilt
Drawing from: Guilt & Shame (website page), Why Trauma Can Make You Feel Dirty
[Planning Complete] Chapter 15: Self-Blame
Drawing from: What if I Caused the Abuse?, The Weight of Self-Blame, Why Childhood Abuse Is Never Your Fault
[Planning Complete] Chapter 18: Anger After Trauma
Drawing from: The Validity of Anger in Your Healing Journey, To the Abuse Survivors Who Are Still Angry
[Planning Complete] Chapter 19: Grieving What Was Lost
Drawing from: Grieving the Childhood You Didn't Get, Embracing Your Inner Child, Who You Were Before Trauma (Important to note that while my blog posts pulled from are focused on childhood, this chapter will focus on more than that since a lot of people have trauma later in life and I want to include them. I just don't have prewritten content for that and need to write that from scratch.)
[Planning Complete] Chapter 21: Boundaries
Drawing from: Boundaries (website page), Creating & Enforcing Boundaries, Please Don't Touch Me, When a Third Party Is Used to Get Around Your Boundaries, Are They Trying to Manipulate Me?
[Planning Complete] Chapter 22: Healthy Communication
Drawing from: You're Allowed to Be Hurt Even if They Didn't Mean It
[Planned] Chapter 23: People Pleasing
[Planned] Chapter 24: Dating After Trauma
[Done] Chapter 25: Intimacy After Trauma
Built from: Navigating Sex After Trauma, Hypersexuality & Sex Repulsion, personal experiences, and substantial new material
[Planning Complete] Chapter 26: Talking About Trauma
Drawing from: The Stigma of Talking About It, How to Tell a Loved One About Your Trauma
[Planned] Chapter 27: Feeling Like a Burden
[Planning Complete] Chapter 28: Supporting Someone with Trauma
Drawing from: How to Listen to Someone Talk About Their Trauma
[Planning Complete] Chapter 31: Safe Spaces
Drawing from: Create a Safe Space
[Planning Complete] Chapter 32: Self-Care Boxes
Drawing from: Make a Self-Care Box
[Planning Complete] Chapter 33: Types of Therapy
Drawing from: DBT Skills, Tips & Questions for Finding a Therapist
[Planned] Chapter 34: Journalling
[Planned] Chapter 35: Flashback Plans
[Planning Complete] Chapter 36: Crisis Plans
Drawing from: Make a Crisis Plan
[Planning Complete] Chapter 37: Traumaversaries
Drawing from: Trauma Around the Holidays, Navigating Traumaversaries
[Writing] Chapter 38: Why Healing Can Feel Harder Than Before
Drawing from: Why Do I Feel Worse After I'm Finally Safe?, Healing in Secret, Why Calm Can Feel Wrong After Chaos, When Healing Feels Boring (And Why That's Actually Good)
[Writing] Chapter 39: The Reality of Healing
Drawing from: Healing Isn't Fair and It's Okay to Admit That, The Myth of Fully "Moving On", Forgiveness & Healing
[Planned] Chapter 40: Building a Life After Trauma
For those that don't know yet, this is a book I'm working on! Using a lot of my written blog posts and new content. You can follow my writing blog for updates. Here is the planned outline so far!
Some of us aren’t strong. We survived because there was no alternative. The only way through was… through.
But it’s okay if we aren’t one of the strong ones. We are still just as valuable and deserving of credit and support for surviving.
(And before anyone comes on here to tell me that I’m wrong and I’m strong, that’s not your place. I’m not strong. And I don’t say that as a bad thing. I’m okay with it and admitting it has allowed me to heal. It isn’t a moral failing to not be strong.)
Just want to say a reminder that I’m not saying trauma survivors as a whole aren’t strong, but that we have a right to decide if we personally consider ourselves strong or not. Every time this turns up in my notes again, I get a comment or ask telling me off.
And to those of us who don’t feel strong, then you deserve to know that’s okay! You’re still valid and worthy of love, support and healing.
Like is it my instinct to think someone else is strong even if they don’t feel it? Yes, absolutely. But as someone on the other side, I don’t think it’s up to me to disagree with their feelings. And for me, what helped me was thinking it’s okay to not be strong rather than convince myself I am strong. Everyone is different though. If this rubs you wrong, then the post isn’t for you.
The truth is, trauma isn't something you earn by surviving the worst thing imaginable. It isn't measured against someone else's experiences, and there isn't an invisible line you have to cross before you're "allowed" to call what happened to you traumatic.
Find Me Elsewhere:
Facebook | Instagram | My Trauma Website
There is still a lot of writing to be done. I'll have a better estimate once it's written and the editing is being done, but my best guess at this point is late 2026 or early 2027!
I'll try and post updates here, but I'll be sharing a lot more updates on my blog for my books. @writingwithapril
any chance you can share the sex chapter? i really like the blog post and i'd love to see what you added. i imagine publishing is months away and i'm impatient lol
Here you go, anon!
Please note that this has not been edited by me, nor my husband! In other words, please don't hold little mistakes against me lol. (You're valid to point them out if you want, but I'd like it to really be noted this is an extremely rough draft.)
One chapter, and an Author's Note done out of... 40 expected chapters for The Weight We Carry.
I thought that would be an easy chapter to start on since I had written a good blog post on it. Navigating Sex After Trauma. I thought it would mostly be a copy and paste. Haha, I was very wrong.
I wanted to expand on it a lot for the book so I think it ended up 2-3x a long with some structural changes.
That was a chapter that I think required a lot more care so I don't think that they'll all be so challenging and long to write. Probably a great one to start on though!
Oof, perspective. My original blog post is 1,825 words. The chapter is... 5,830 words. Some of those are headings and reflection questions and an added activity.
This did take a few hours though... Dang.
