Good News
Healing Without Forgiving: A Hero’s Journey for Dissociative Survivors has been in process for several years. Many of you responded to questionnaires or took part in focus groups and interviews that put flesh on the bones of this illustrated workbook with multi-sensory exercises. I’ll be forever grateful for your participation ❤️. Now, its publication is just around the corner! On January 13, 2026, Koehler Books will run the printing presses. Preorders will begin toward the end of 2025. And by the end of this month, I’ll ask you to weigh in on a cover poll. To wet your whistle, I’m going to print occasional excerpts from the book from now until the end of the year. Today’s excerpt comes from the Introduction. With it, I’m introducing Healing Without Forgiving: A Hero’s Journey for Dissociative Survivors!
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As a survivor of chronic childhood trauma who was diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder (DID) in 1992, I bring good news.
Your wounds have made life difficult and disorienting today, but healing will make you wise and whole tomorrow. You may feel confused and fearful now, but clarity and security are over the horizon. You are not relegated to a half life limited by pain and doom, but to a whole life marked by joy, sorrow, happiness, sadness, achievement, failure, and all other human emotions and experiences. Because you were resourceful enough to survive then, you are resourceful enough to heal now. You are not the speck of dust on the floor that some of your parts may believe. You are—all of you—the bright, creative, worthy person who has embarked on a journey to discover yourself.
The good news is you’re alive.
The good news is you have the capacity to thrive.
The good news is you can imagine a future.
The good news is you can become whole.
You are the hero of your story and, as such, you have the power to transform yourself both inwardly and outwardly to become the person you’re meant to be. Don’t get me wrong. Healing isn’t easy; in fact, it’s difficult beyond belief. But the very fact that you’re here with this workbook means you have the drive to heal from horrible, unimaginable abuse.
Healing Without Forgiving: A Hero’s Journey for Dissociative Survivors is meant to be a guide—one of many—for you on this journey. Other guides include your compassionate, trauma-informed therapist, your friends and family members who have proven themselves trustworthy, your own forged-in-the-fire intuition, and the work of healing that’s described in this workbook.
Like it or not, you have picked up the mantel, and you’re crossing the threshold as we speak. Mentors and companions will cross your path. Trials and obstacles will impede your progress. All the while, you’ll go inward to find the grit to continue in the face of impossible pain.
One obstacle you may face is the false assumption that forgiving is a moral high ground in the healing landscape, and that forgiving your perpetrator is a requirement for healing. From an alternative perspective, Healing Without Forgiving will look at healing as the greater process, with forgiving as one option in the healing universe. Forgiveness is a tiny slice of restoring your emotional, mental, and physical health; healing is the whole pie. Forgiveness may be one objective out of a hundred; healing is the overarching goal that opens up new life, new insights, and new possibilities. Many survivors find wholeness through the healing journey, but few find forgiveness as the path to healing. Instead, healing is the path to forgiving, if that is a desired outcome.
A hero’s journey has a reward at the end, like the treasure at the end of the rainbow. All your hard work will not be for naught. On the contrary, you will fulfill your intention to heal and live into your vision for wholeness. For you, and all of us who have experienced chronic childhood trauma, the reward you will receive is a happy, healthy life. Ultimately, that is the good news you’re waiting to hear!
📫 Last month, I asked what home means to you. Deb sent back a beautiful response that I’ll share with you here:
When I read your blog and think of what home means for me, I FEEL it. I actually get a sensation in my chest, a little to the left where my heart resides. I then imagine opening the front door of my heart and inviting all my parts inside a warm and welcoming space. I think I carry my home with me, not unlike a turtle, but on the inside of my flesh and bones. It is a deep-inside place that has greatly managed to expand over time.
Yay, Deb! We’ll keep these powerful thoughts with us through thick and through thin.
With this blog post, I’ll ask a new question. What good news do you find in your diagnosis or your experience of dissociation?
Click here with your thoughts and I’ll share them in my next post.
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The wound is the place where the Light enters you.
~ Rumi
Lyn