Welcome to Still Here

I want to be honest about what Still Here is. It's a labour of love built by one person, working full time, on a healing journey that isn't finished. There are sections still being built, chapters still being written, and conversations still to be had. But what is here is real — every book on the resource shelf is one I actually read, every tool on the tools page is one that I actually tried and helped me, and every word of the memoir is true. Certain names of others have been changed to protect their privacy, but the events and the feelings behind them are not.

I have always been a quiet person about my own life. And I have always had people around me — close friends, found family, and my children — who have shown up for me in ways I have never been able to fully put into words. My personality, my awkwardness, the walls I built — they made it hard to express what their presence actually meant to me. This website is as much about them as it is about me. Without those people I would not have made it to where I am today. If any of them are reading this — they know who they are — I hope this is the thank you I never quite knew how to say out loud.

This started simply. I wanted to tell my story — not because I had it all figured out, but because I didn't. I'm a childhood trauma survivor who spent most of my life not even knowing that's what I was. What I knew was that something felt broken, that I couldn't explain why, and that I was exhausted from carrying something I couldn't name. Writing became the way I started to understand it.

What I didn't expect was that telling my story would grow into something bigger. For a long time I believed my story wasn't important enough to tell — that what happened to me wasn't dramatic enough, significant enough, or worthy of anyone's attention. I spent years minimizing it, explaining it away, and staying silent. If that sounds familiar, I want you to know something right now: your story is worth telling. Whatever happened to you — however big or small you've been taught to believe it was — it matters. You matter. And the more I wrote, the more I realized how many people are out there carrying the same weight quietly and alone, wondering if anyone else feels the way they do. This site is my answer to that. If even one person reads something here and feels a little less alone, then every hour I've put into building this has been worth it.

When I first started on my healing journey, I looked everywhere for connection — books, podcasts, people who had been through something like what I had been through. And I found plenty of them. But so many of the voices I encountered felt like they were already on the other side of it. Polished. Resolved. Speaking from a place of having arrived somewhere I hadn't even found the road to yet. I didn't feel connected to them. I needed someone who was still in it. So that's who I'm trying to be for you.

Here's what you'll find: my memoir Blind to Progress (working title) is being written in real time and excerpts of each part are available to read. The resource shelf holds 41 books I read during my own healing journey, plus a curated top 25 recommended by therapists and survivors worldwide. The tools page has breathing techniques, grounding exercises, apps, sound therapy and workbooks — things you can use in the next five minutes if you need them. The glossary gives plain-language explanations of trauma terminology and there is a live ACEs calculator. And the local help finder gives you crisis lines and mental health resources specific to your province and your identity, in seconds.

And one last thing — if you have a story of your own, I hope this place gives you permission to tell it. Not because anyone is waiting for it, though they are. But because you deserve to take up space. Your story is not too small. It is not too ordinary. It is not too anything. It is yours, and it is enough.

Thank you for being here. Wherever you are in your journey — at the very beginning, years in, or somewhere in between — you are not alone. I'm still here. And so are you.

— TJ