How I Healed My Gifted Trauma
true stories from gifted adults
Gifted trauma doesn’t stem from giftedness itself, but from the mismatch between gifted people’s complex inner worlds and the environments that fail to understand or support them. This wounding often disrupts our ability to fully accept, embody, and express our gifted selves, especially when layered with experiences of shock, betrayal, neglect or exclusion. The resulting fractures in our relationship with our gifted self disconnect us from essential aspects of our creativity, meaning and sense of existential belonging. Through healing and a return to wholeness, our gifted traits offer profound potential for growth, creativity, connection and meaning. How I Healed My Gifted Trauma is a collective exploration of that journey, written and illustrated by gifted adults around the world who have faced, integrated and restored wholeness following gifted trauma. Together, we show how uniqueness, adversity, and purpose can be woven into a deeper sense of existential belonging.
Compiled and edited by Jennifer Harvey Sallin and Lil Jedynak, in 2025. This book includes 18 stories and many more illustrations from 14 contributors.
Jennifer Harvey Sallin's article Gifted Wounds, Gifted Healing has been adapted from the book's introduction.
"How I Healed My Gifted Trauma is an incredible collection! What an uplifting project. So brimming with uniquely authentic experiences that can't help but converge through the shared cycle of trauma and healing. I'm sure the echoes of each story will be heard and felt by many gifted readers seeking wisdom and healing."
"I really love how creative - and hopeful - How I Healed My Gifted Trauma feels."
Find our other titles at our bookshop, including:
- Embracing the Gifted Quest
- Being Me: Reflections on the Gifted Person's Path to Authenticity
- Making the Invisible Visible: Intersections of Chronic Illness, Disability & Giftedness
- Gifts for an Emerging World
- Emergence: Contemplations & Creative Expressions of the Gifted Feminine
- These Gifts are Sacred
- Retrieving the Bones: Restoring & Re-Storying the Gifted Feminine
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