The Archive
Essays, episodes, and reflections — one new piece of each, every week.
The Latest
THIS WEEK'S ESSAY
When Everything is Trauma, What is Human?
The field of trauma therapy has given us an increasingly expansive framework for understanding human suffering — one that now risks explaining nearly all adult difficulty as the consequence of a damaged childhood. This essay examines concept creep, the phenomenon by which clinical terms gradually lower their threshold to include less extreme experiences, and traces how it has reshaped the way people understand their own stories.Â
THIS WEEK'S EPISODE
Is Everything Trauma?
The word trauma has changed. What once described an experience that overwhelmed the nervous system beyond its capacity to cope now appears on social media infographics as an explanation for low self-worth, relationship struggles, and everyday emotional difficulty. In this episode, we look at concept creep — the gradual lowering of the threshold for harm-related language — and ask what it actually costs us to call the friction of being human a disorder.
THIS WEEK'S REFLECTION
You Are Allowed to Have Been Affected
For when something was hard — and you're not sure you have the right word for it, the right label, or enough of a reason for it to count. This meditation asks you to set down the search for a verdict and simply acknowledge what you lived through. You don't need a diagnosis, a guilty party, or anyone's agreement for your experience to be real.
You are a child of God before you are a child of mine.
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The words came to me in a yoga class,
shortly after I became pregnant with you.
A wave of surrender washed over me.
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I’m not doing any of this.
I’m not controlling any of this.
I am but a witness to your beautiful unfolding.
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Why w...
Your hands were so tiny,
your fingers barely wrapping
around one of mine.
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Now I look at you
and your hands reach for my face—
holding me,
studying my lips.
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I see your thoughts spinning,
calculating,
learning.
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Your hands—
reaching for my face,
your palms as big as my cheeks now.
...When I watch you sleep, my heart fills with both love and fear.
You look so peaceful, so content — safe and trusting in my arms.
I see innocence in your face, hear it in your breath.
There is not a single cell in your body holding stress or tension.
You are completely at ease.
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When I watch y...
The Unbecoming Hub Podcast
A space for reflecting on what it means to be human without turning it into a project.
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The Unbecoming Hub: Meditations & Spoken Reflections
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