Susan Gold - Why Writing About Your Childhood Trauma Is the Most Powerful Thing You Can Do

Susan Gold is a published author, consultant, and coach whose memoir Toxic Family: Transforming Childhood Trauma into Adult Freedom chronicles her journey from a deeply wounded childhood to a thriving adult life built in New York City's entertainment industry.Most people who survive difficult childhoods spend their entire adult lives trying to outrun them. They build careers, change cities, stay busy — and it works, until it doesn't. Susan left home the morning after high school graduation, built a talent brokerage that landed Andy Warhol as a client, trained Barbara Walters, and worked with network executives like Roger Ailes. By every external measure, she had made it. But here's the thing: the unaddressed trauma followed her the entire way. It took two bouts of clinical depression, suicidal ideation, and over a decade of therapeutic work before she was ready to do the hardest thing she'd ever done — write it all down.Expect to learn why leaving a toxic family behind doesn't mean the trauma is resolved, what clinical depression actually looks like from the inside and how Susan recognised when she was in danger, how a 28-day inpatient program gave her the tools to stop a depressive episode before it became suicidal, why writing from the perspective of your inner child unlocks healing that years of traditional therapy can't always reach, why most people who survived childhood trauma underestimate how different their story really is, what it actually takes to sit down and write a memoir when the material is painful, how workbook exercises Susan developed from her own recovery are helping readers navigate their most difficult moments, and much more.This conversation will challenge the belief that moving forward means leaving the past behind.