An online writing community that cares about writers as whole people who are processing, living, and creating at the same time. A space for writing through trauma, together. We are not content machines. We have bodies. Moods. Tuesdays.
"I often felt trapped inside the narratives of my abusers. I was never the protagonist in my own story." Writing in the horror genre, and writing letters to fictional characters, gave me control over my monsters. That process became nine books, a methodology, and a community. Psychology Today
Author of nine books · Featured in Psychology Today
Ph.D., University of Glasgow · MFA, University of Notre Dame · PMP
The Survival Kit Writing Collective
An online community for writing through trauma, together. Open now. Choose your rate: $99 standard, $49 needs-based if you genuinely can't afford the $99 (no questions asked), or $129 standard plus pay it forward. Free 7-day trial.
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A trauma-informed writing & wellness practice
A community for people writing through trauma and other difficult material. Reflection and inner work is paired with writing work to serve the whole person. We explore persona, myth, fragment, and genre shift as possible ways of expressing trauma with the goal of finding the right approach for your individual needs, writing style, and voice. Open now.
Learn MoreI am a trauma survivor, and so much was unspeakable to me for so long. Then, I started writing letters to Buffy Summers. And memories I was never before able to write or speak flooded out.
This work became two books: My Buffed Up Life and Gellar Studies. From there, I developed a trauma writing course at UCLA Extension from this personal writing methodology, drawing on my previous trauma-informed teaching and facilitation work, and have convened workshops on trauma, pop culture, and identity at venues such as USC. My work has also been featured in Psychology Today.
Survival Kit Writing Collective was born from this work around writing trauma and I am so excited to share it with all of you.
“Erik’s teaching helped me transform the traumatic events in my life into art. I started to release a lot of pain that I experienced into light and to have a greater sense of compassion for myself.”
Trauma clogs and disrupts narrative. My mistake was not seeing these disjointed sequences as narrative. I saw them as broken rather than as their own jagged story that didn't need smoothing. Psychology Today