It is my pleasure to announce three additions to the This Ends Here editorial marketing team: Alefiya, Brooke, and Lindsay.

Meet Alefiya (she/her)

Alefiya (ah-leaf-ee-ya) recently graduated from Ithaca College with a B.A. in Journalism. While in college, she took an interest in writing about environmentalism, pop culture, and feminism. She is excited to join the This Ends Here team and help promote a book that unpacks generational trauma while reflecting on her own experiences.

Alefiya says, “This Ends Here is a prime example of the healing that can come when looking at your history critically and compassionately. I am excited to help get this book to as large of an audience as possible, and learn more about myself along the way!”

Outside of writing, Alefiya enjoys hiking, collaging, and traveling.

Meet Brooke (she/her)

Brooke is a rising senior at Ithaca College majoring in Advertising, Public Relations, and Marketing Communications, with minors in Psychology and Economics. She is excited to help promote a book that explores complex topics, while creating engaging, accessible, and creative subscriber growth strategies.

Brooke says, “I’m looking forward to helping connect this book with the readers who will appreciate its message. It’s a powerful story, and I’m excited to help share it in a creative and meaningful way.”

Outside of the classroom, Brooke is a member of the Ithaca College Field Hockey team and enjoys event planning, spending time at the beach, and bringing creative marketing ideas to life.

Meet Lindsay (she/her)

Lindsay is a recent graduate of the New York University Summer Publishing Institute and a co-valedictorian of Susquehanna University, with a B.A. in Publishing & Editing and Creative Writing. She is interested in supporting the launch of powerful books, and is especially excited to do so with This Ends Here.

Lindsay says, “I am very excited to work on this book marketing project to help reach and build a community of readers who can support one another.”

Lindsay resides in Princeton, New Jersey, and enjoys thrifting with friends.

If you know a college student or recent graduate who might be interested in joining the next This Ends Here intern cohort working in editorial marketing, content development, creative production, social media, or a related discipline, I invite them to email a resume and letter of interest to christinamayjourney@gmail.com. Thank you!

Despite the fact that my grandfather, James Murray, was a “1916 Man,” a revolutionary on the right side of the Irish War for Independence, and a celebrated war hero, he was exiled from his homeland and had to flee to America, a story I tell in full in the book.

By the time he landed in New York in 1926, Grandpa Pipes had little money and only a few relatives in the States. Soon after his arrival, he married and started a family. My grandfather worked hard, but the Great Depression hit in 1929, and times were tough.

People who fought for Irish independence were eventually awarded pensions by the Irish government because the new state leaders felt they owed a debt of gratitude to those who fought for the Republic. But each pension claim required proof and many of the revolutionaries who liberated Ireland were more akin to a ragtag militia than a well-documented army. Plus, my grandfather was chasing his Irish pension from New York City, which meant old comrades back home had to vouch for him, and many of the men who had fought alongside him or served prison terms with him were dead.

In order to get the money he was owed, he had to provide documentation to “convince” the Pension Board that he was, in fact, involved in all of the battles he listed in his application.

His original application was received on January 19, 1935. Transcription of his note that accompanied the application is below.

“To the Minister for Defence...Dear Sir, I herewith enclose application for Cert. of Service and hope it proves satisfactory as I am just another exile out here. I remained in Ireland until I had to leave, I was hounded all the time and could hold no job. I even lost my job with M.G.W.R. (the Midland Great Western Railway) and never got it back. I never looked for any compensation as anything I did for Ireland I would gladly do it again, but I have a wife and three children out here and they have to be looked to, so I hope you’ll give me consideration and thanking you. I remain dear sir, yours faithfully, James Murray”

The pension was a sizable amount, I estimate somewhere in the $50,000 - $90,000 range based on the data available. So this pension was definitely worth pursuing, especially since it was owed to my grandfather by the state.

But the Irish government was slow to process his file.

A follow-up letter from my grandfather more than a year after he applied provided additional information, as well as his dismay at the delay.

708 First Ave., New York.
14th June 1936.

To Referee, Griffith Bks. Dublin.

Dear Sir,

Please find enclosed statement giving details of my service as best I could. It’s difficult for me to [remember] exact dates as there is so much to be told from 1916 to 1923, between Hunger Strikes, prison and “on the Run,” I don’t think I escaped much of it.

Then our officers taking different sides in later periods, it’s hard to find them to verify statements — after 10 years in this country trying to make a living (and a poor one at that) a man’s memory isn’t as good as it should be. Anything I done for Ireland I have no regrets & hope to be able to go back someday.

One thing I’ll [profit] out of is the Cert. of Service which I hope I am entitled to. Awaiting Reply & Thanking you.

Yours fully
J. Murray.

Still hearing nothing another year later, on Easter Sunday 21 years after the Rising, my grandfather called in a favor from the then Speaker of the Irish Parliament, Frank Fahy, who had previously been imprisoned with my grandfather at Lewes.

678, E.138 Street,
Bronx, New York.

Easter Sunday.

Dear Mr. Fahy (T.D.)

You will be surprised hearing from me but this day always bring back old memories so I thought I would drop you a line but you probably have forgotten all about me and won’t know who I am as 21 years is a long time and big changes have come since. I happen to be one of the old crowd who served in Lewes prison with you and the rest of the faithful few as that is all they were then. I served in Easter Week and was captured by the Notts. and Derbys and I am one of the Galway men who was tried by Maxwell at No. 1 Court Martial in Richmond Bks. and sentenced to a term. You are the one that knows what we went through after in Kilmainham and Mountjoy before being shipped to England. I was sent to Wormwood Scrubbs with 18 of the boys when you went to Portland. We all finished up in Lewes where you can’t forget the days we spent under old Chief Stone, when I was fireman in the boilerhouse. To be truthful I have had days as hard here. This country isn’t all sunshine. After leaving Lewes I was active, “on the run” from the German plot and active all during the Black and Tan time. In fact, I never slept a night in a house for two years. After the Tan Truce I went in Bks. at Oranmore with Baby Duggan (R.I.P) and later in Gort Bks. with Joe Stanford. I took active part in the civil war and was captured and interned in the Curragh for two years. I was released in 1923. I had to come to this country finding it impossible to get a living at home. I filed application for the I.R.A. pension under the 1934 Act. I gave Joe Stanford, Stephen Jordan, T.D., and Sean Broderick, T.D. as refs, thinking you might not remember me if I gave your name and those others knew me better in later events. My two best refs. were dead, poor Michael Flemming of Clarenbridge and Joe Howley of Oranmore (R.I.P) with whom I served mostly through the Tan war. I received a nice letter from Joe Stanford saying he would do his best for me. If you ever get in touch with Joe, tell him you heard from the chap they used call “Fr. Newell” as that was the name I went by in the column.

I am enclosing you a letter I got from the Referee and will be grateful if you can help me in the matter as I think we are entitled to a cert. of service especially the few convicts that are left out of the 130 that were sentenced. I never met any of the old crowd in this country, I think I am the only exile (to my grief). I often made inquiries and think there must be 30% of the Lewes crowd gone to their reward - poor Michael Flemming, Joe Howley, Tom Ashe, Harry Boland, Phil Cosgrave, Peter Clancy and, I heard, Fergus O’Connor, who was tried the same day as I. I was going to write to one more Galway man, Colum O’Gaora, but I have not his address, besides I am not a good hand at writing “Gaelic” and you know Colum wouldn’t recognise English.

Well as I am now married and having wife and three children I find it very hard here under present conditions. You will help me a lot if you will communicate with Referee or use any influence to hurry my case re getting certificate,

[Page 2]

that is, if you think I am entitled to it. If there is anything going I think the 1916 crowd should get preference. When I filed my application I did not claim any rank, just a dispatch rider and Coy. Commander which I was for 3 years in Derrydonnell Company. One thing I am proud of is Galway hasn’t forgotten the old timers in electing Mattie Niland to the Dáil as he was one true blue and a silent sufferer like a lot more of us. He too can give an account of me if you tell him you heard from me. Forgive me if I am troubling you too much. I will appreciate anything you do for me. I hope this finds you and Mrs. quite well. That reminds me when I was leaving Lewes I took out a message for your wife which I gave to Liam Clarke who was a patient in Richmond Hospital suffering from wounds he received Easter Week. He said it would be delivered all right as she was then down in Cahirciveen, Co. Kerry. It was just a message Michael Flemming (R.I.P) gave me, as your wife and people were uneasy about your condition in Lewes. So you see I have not such a bad memory after all I went through, although I was only in my teens then. I wouldn’t bore you with all this but I want you to know who I am. Any other facts you would like to know I’ll gladly give when I hear from you.

Thanking you and awaiting a reply,
With best regards,
I remain, Dear Mr. Fahy,
Yours v. sincerely,
(signed) Jim Murray.

P.S. My ref. No. on application with Referee is - 17692 and my Irish address was - Derrydonnell, Athenry. That is when I wasn’t in jail and I had quite a few prison addresses.

N.B. My application was sent from 708 First Avenue, New York, U.S.A. The Pensions Board might note my new address.

Jim Murray,
678E. 138 Street,
Bronx,
New York.

J.M.

Fahy responded with this letter telling my grandfather he was trying to help get his pension application through. The bottom of the document is cut off but what’s left is telling.

Dáil Éireann, Tigh Laighean (Leinster House), Baile Átha Cliath, (Dublin)

12th April, 1937.

Mr. James Murray,

A Chara,

You would have been quite safe in giving me as a reference for Lewes days, as I remember all my fellow prisoners. Many of them are now beneath the sod – God rest them.

I shall tell Hattie Niland that you wrote, and I have written to Joe Stanford and given him your address. Exile is certainly hard. As soon as I hear from the Pensions Board I shall write again. I have written to them in support of your claim and asked them to expedite it.

I am kept so busy with parliamentary business that I can rarely go down to Galway. Being Ceann Comhairle (Speaker of the Dáil) I am precluded from participation in party politics.

You must have had a hard time during the depression in U.S.A. I hope the improvement will continue, others, including a brother of mine, have told me that life is difficult in America. What a pity that any 1916 man had to emigrate!

The same day he wrote that letter to my grandfather, Fahy sent one to the Pension Board to try to help move things along.

In other words, Fahy was not just offering my grandfather sympathy. He was actively trying to motivate the state to act on my grandfather’s behalf.

Another year passed and my grandfather grew understandably frustrated.

678 East 138 St.,
Bronx
N.Y.C.

10 May 1938.

To The Referee Griffith Bks. Dublin

Dear Sir,

Just a line Re — my Application No. 17692. As an old I.R.A. Man who was tried & convicted for my activities in 1916 Rebellion & the years that followed up to 1923. As I stated in my application, I have not yet received my Cert. of Service & it’s over 3 years since I filed application & I also wish to state there was only 160 men convicted by General Court Martial. I am one of those, I can’t understand why my claim got no consideration up to this as I gave you all particulars — also sent you a prison document supporting my claim for that period. There are also several members in the Dáil today who were tried in the same court & willing to voucher my claim.

I have also met men here holding good jobs & told me they were drawing their I.R.A. pension for past six months & only joined up in late years.

I would like to get some consideration as my activities in Ireland left me in exile today, a rolling stone with nothing but hard knocks & not even a decent job, while those who were our enemies & enemies of our country are holding good jobs in Ireland today. Awaiting a reply from you & trust you will hurry my claim...

He finally received this letter from the Irish Department of Defence indicating the application had been processed… a full 17 years after he first applied.

Guthán 45641. (Telephone), Uimhir Thagartha., (Reference No.) 34/SP/E.9293.

An Roinn Cosanta, (Department of Defence), Brainse Airgeadais, (Finance Branch), Coláiste Caoimhín, (St. Kevin’s College), Glasnaoidhean, (Glasnevin), Baile Átha Cliath. (Dublin).

2nd April, 1952

Dear Sir,

With reference to previous correspondence, I am directed by the Minister for Defence to state that a Warrant for the nett sum of £97. 12. 3. (Ninety seven pounds, twelve shillings and three pence) has been lodged to a Resident Account in your name with the Bank of Ireland, G.P.O., Box 9, Dublin, being the amount due on foot of your award under the Military Service Pensions Acts, 1934/49, to the 31st December, 1951. Further payments of your Military Service Pension will be made in the same way on the completion and return by you of the Form of Life Certificate which will issue to you at the end of each quarter.

Yours faithfully,

for SECRETARY.

Mr. James Murray,
678 East 138th Street,
New York,
U.S.A.

My grandfather fought in a revolution, was tried, convicted, and imprisoned several times, and was exiled from a country he helped to form… and it took the Republic nearly two decades to give him his due.

Once the pension began, he received the payments each quarter for the remainder of the 36 years of his life. He died in 1988 (I was a junior in high school.) The pension payments then went to my grandmother until her death in 1993 (I was a senior in college and had just started dating the man who would later become my husband).

Ireland’s debt of gratitude to my grandfather had finally been paid.

Incidentally, waiting for Ireland to process paperwork could be considered another inherited hardship. When I applied for my kids’ Irish citizenship, it took over two years for the Irish government to process the documentation. Then it took another year for their Irish passports to come through. Some things never change.

The Irish do take their time but, in the end, they get it done. My eldest son lives in Europe today thanks to his Irish citizenship.

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. Click to read more about this ritual. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week…

How do you know when you carry unprocessed trauma? Below are a dozen everyday situations, each with two different reactions. Pick whichever one actually sounds more like how you might respond… no cheating or choosing the answer that sounds better.

Answers are at the bottom.

1. A friend texts, “I’d like to speak to you later.”

a) You re-read your last five texts you sent to them, scanning for what could have upset them.

b) You think, “Huh, wonder what that’s about,” then go back to your day.

2. You make a small mistake at work.

a) You say, “Oops,” fix it, and move on.

b) You feel a flush of shame and spiral into a mental narrative of, “I’m a failure, a fraud, and not as good as anyone else here.”

3. Someone compliments something about your appearance or personality.

a) You deflect immediately, feel weirdly exposed, and quietly wonder what they actually want from you.

b) You say “Thanks!” maybe feel a little shy about it, but the goodness lands.

4. A friend casually mentions at lunch they need to do something like find a doctor, move apartments, or call a restaurant for a dinner reservation.

a) You say, “Oh, good luck with that,” and go back to your fries.

b) You’re already mentally helping them before they’ve finished the sentence. You immediately generate a recommendation, offer a contact, or ask if they’d like you to “do it for them.”

5. Someone raises their voice near you, not at you, just near you.

a) Your whole body goes on alert. You flinch or gasp and it takes a little while for your nervous system to calm down.

b) You feel a mild startle, you note it, and it passes quickly.

6. A partner asks for some space for the evening.

a) You reply, “Cool, talk to you tomorrow,” and you enjoy your night.

b) You spiral into “they’re losing interest in me,” even though they told you last week you’re one of their favorite people.

7. You’re in a genuinely healthy relationship and everything’s going fine.

a) You feel on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop, or you pick a fight because feeling activated is more comfortable to you than peace.

b) You enjoy the fine-ness. Fine is good. Fine is the goal.

8. You accomplish something impressive.

a) You feel internal pride. Maybe you tell someone. Maybe you treat yourself.

b) You think, “I’m not special, anyone could’ve done that,” or “It was a team effort,” even if what you did really was exceptional.

9. Someone expresses that they are mildly annoyed with you.

a) You say, “Oh, my bad,” and feel a bit awkward but let it pass.

b) You over-apologize, over-explain, or go quiet for the rest of the day.

10. You’re in a conversation and suddenly feel far away, like you’ve left your body and you’re watching yourself from outside.

a) You “come back” and realize you missed a chunk of the conversation while you were mentally absent.

b) This basically doesn’t happen to you unless you’re running on very little sleep.

11. You’re the one in charge of a group project, trip, or event.

a) You control every detail, because if you don’t and something goes wrong, you believe it would be catastrophic.

b) You delegate, trust people, and let it be imperfect.

12. A friend says they’re too busy to hang out. Then you find out they went out with another mutual friend that same week.

a) You think, “That’s annoying,” you feel a flicker of hurt, then you reach out to the friend to make brunch plans for next week.

b) It feels like a gut punch. You feel not just hurt but like it validates that you are replaceable or not important.

How did you do? The responses that suggest evidence of trauma are: 1-a, 2-b, 3-a, 4-b, 5-a, 6-b, 7-a, 8-b, 9-b, 10-a, 11-a, 12-b

This isn’t a clinical assessment, and it won’t tell the whole story of who you are. But if most of your answers landed in the trauma category, know that you are likely exhibiting nervous system responses you learned long ago. At some point, you were taught that the world wasn’t safe or predictable, so you developed a very good alarm system to protect you, even though the danger disappeared long ago.

It was easy for me to develop this quiz because I have personally exhibited all of these protective responses, plus a whole host of others. Before I began healing. Before I had language for what was happening inside of me.

Even so, when I am tired, stressed, hungry, overwhelmed, or otherwise depleted, these reactions sometimes resurface. Most of the time, I am able to choose differently, even when doing so goes against what feels normal to me. That’s how healing works.

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. Click to read more about this ritual. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week…

We Irish are known for our love of “the drink.” While in most circles that expression refers to alcoholic beverages, and it certainly does in my lineage as well, there is another drink that surpasses even alcohol in consumption amongst my kin: tea.

Hot tea has played a starring role not only in Irish history but in my grandfather’s life, my dad’s life, my own life, and now in the lives of my children.

First, a bit of history about how something grown oceans away ended up a staple in Irish households.

Tea arrived in Ireland in the late 17th century as a luxury item for the Anglo-Irish upper classes. It came through British trade routes, and for a long time it was so expensive that ordinary Irish families treated it like gold, literally keeping their tea under lock and key.

By the 19th century, tea prices dropped and it became more accessible. The Irish like their tea strong. There is a reason for this. Most Irish water is very soft which means it draws the natural flavors, oils, and compounds out of tea leaves much more effectively than hard water does, allowing the teas to brew darker and richer. If you’ve ever enjoyed a cup of Irish Breakfast tea, you know!

By the 20th century, tea had become the social institution in Irish families that it remains today. The kettle is put on for funerals, celebrations, arguments, bad news, good news, illness, recovery, reunions, and just because. To the Irish, the answer is always tea.

With the average Irish person drinking 4–6 cups a day, tea in Ireland is more than a habit, it’s a lifestyle.

Tea has been central to my family’s history too.

In one of my grandfather’s letters when he escaped Ireland in 1926 via ship to America, he wrote, “I met two girls from Mayo, they are in First Class. They bring two of us up for Irish tea at night.” Tea was a social connector in my family even a century ago.

In This Ends Here, my father tells the story of his baby bottle filled not with milk but tea. It's exactly as Irish as it sounds.

My first sip of tea, at the age of 14 months, was such a monumental occasion that my family photographed the event.

Grandpa Pipes giving me my very first taste of tea

Growing up, my parents didn’t agree on much but they were both militant about needing a cup of tea immediately upon waking. On Christmas morning, we kids had to stay upstairs - bursting with anticipation about what Santa might have brought - until my mom had, “finished her tea.”

My father drank tea constantly. When I picture childhood weekends with my dad in his NYC apartment, I hear the kettle whistling in the background. He boiled the kettle so often that he relied on that screeching sound to remind him to turn it off before it caught fire. Sometimes tea was made from the boiled water, sometimes he turned the kettle off only to turn it back on a few minutes later to start the process over again.

I can’t remember a time when tea wasn’t part of my life. I would take sips here and there as a kid but I started drinking tea regularly when I was a teenager. Today, I drink tea first thing every morning, no matter where in the world I wake up. In fact, because good tea is so hard to procure on the road, I travel with my own collapsible kettle, a bone china tea mug, and an ample supply of Wegmans teabags. I’ve tried every English/Irish Breakfast bagged tea out there, and I find that Wegmans’ English Breakfast is one of the strongest, boldest everyday teas available in the US.

My oldest son lost his first tooth at Bewley’s Café on Grafton Street in Dublin. We went there for breakfast specifically because Bewley’s makes excellent black tea. The commitment is real.

Even though drinking tea has always been a big part of my family culture, I never pushed it on my boys. To my surprise and delight, however, both of my children have recently started drinking tea, though my youngest still puts an ice cube in his to cool it off (a bit sacrilegious in our family of piping hot tea drinkers, but we’ll let it slide for now).

Here is how Murrays drink their tea.

• The kettle is filled with tap water (no need to fancy it up with the bottled stuff) and boiled. Not heated. BOILED.

• The water should reach a rolling boil. I struggle with this at altitude, where water boils before it reaches 212 degrees. This is the reason I can never live at higher elevation. Tea in our family was always served, and consumed, piping hot.

• Our family has always drunk bagged tea. My grandpa drank Barry’s. My dad was a Lipton man. I prefer Wegmans. To my knowledge, my kids haven’t developed a favorite yet. But they will.

• We let our tea steep 2-4 minutes. The expression “strong enough to trot a mouse on it” is an actual phrase in Ireland to describe robust tea.

• We add a splash of milk (the tea should be beige, not white).

• We drop in some sugar (I use monk fruit now).

• We serve it in a mug with a thin rim, though my dad, in his later years, took to drinking tea out of insulated to go cups.

My dad and his tea (cigarettes in pocket)

My grandfather wrote home that he was grateful for a cup of Irish tea with strangers in First Class. My dad drank tea all day every day. I drink tea every morning and many afternoons. My boys choose tea as their hot drink of choice. The kettle connects us to each other and to every Murray who ever wrapped their hands around a hot cuppa and felt, just for a moment, that everything was going to be alright.

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. Click to read more about this ritual. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week…

Authors should get at least as much grace as athletes, so I am taking a bye week from sending out my blog this week in honor of my birthday. 🎂

I’m still here. I’m still writing. In fact, I’m rewriting the introduction to This Ends Here: A Story of Four Generations of Trauma, Healing, and Legacy. I had an idea for how to launch readers into the story, and now I’m running with it like a kid holding a sharp pair of scissors.

Did you know that most memoirs take years to write?

I wrote mine in six months.

I have been called an overachiever. But I also built the book around existing content: my dad’s stories, Irish history, my grandfather’s prison letters, and 40 years of journal entries documenting my life. So you could say I had a fairly healthy head start.

Still, even when much of the material already exists, shaping it into a book is a heavy lift. Especially a book where trauma is the main character.

So this week, I’m giving myself a little breathing room.

Thank you for your continued support.

You are the wind beneath my pen!

Or, more accurately, the WINDows beneath my PC.

(And no, AI did not write that joke. The lame humor is all mine, thankyouverymuch.)

Be back next week with more excerpts and support for This Ends Here.

- C

I’m looking for a few smart, curious young people with native social media fluency to help build the launch campaign for my upcoming book. The internship will be 10-15 hours a week, fully remote, with a flexible schedule, and a $500 stipend upon completion. Academic credit may also be available.

Please feel free to share. The application deadline is June 17th.

Author Platform & Book Launch Marketing Intern

Position: Summer Intern (Part-Time/Flexible Hours)
Location: Remote with weekly virtual meetings
Hours: 10–15 hours per week (start/end dates flexible)
Compensation: Eligible for academic credit through participating universities. In addition, interns who successfully complete the program will receive a $500 stipend.

About the Opportunity
An independent author and entrepreneur is seeking a creative, organized, and social-media-savvy intern to help develop a strategic social media and content marketing plan. The intern will play a key role in building an author platform, expanding audience reach, and preparing for the launch of a forthcoming book.

About the Book

This Ends Here: A Story of Four Generations of Trauma, Healing, and Legacy explores the intersection of generational trauma, healing, and personal transformation. Blending memoir, biography, and reflection, the book provides a powerful narrative about turning inherited pain into purpose. Learn more about this project at: christinamayjourney.substack.com

About the Author

Christina Croll on LinkedIn

Intern Responsibilities

· Develop a comprehensive social media strategy, content marketing plan, and four-month launch calendar designed to increase audience engagement and book visibility

· Research current BookTok trends, successful authors, and new marketing strategies

· Brainstorm ideas for engaging social media content, including short-form videos, graphics, captions, and reader engagement posts

· Monitor current social media performance and provide recommendations for growth

· Identify opportunities to connect with influencers, book reviewers, podcasts, speaking engagements, and reading communities

· Track engagement metrics and prepare brief weekly reports

· Brainstorm creative ways to increase visibility, engagement, and newsletter sign-ups

· Analyze current reader stats and identify growth opportunities using social media metrics and market research

Qualifications

· Current college student or recent graduate studying marketing, communications, psychology, journalism, media, analytics, business, or a related field

· Strong interest in books, psychology, mental health, and social media marketing

· Familiarity with TikTok/BookTok, Instagram, Facebook, Substack, and emerging social platforms

· Excellent communication skills

· Creative, self-motivated, and comfortable working independently

· Experience creating social media content is preferred but not required

What You’ll Gain

· Hands-on experience in building an influencer brand and book launch marketing

· Portfolio-building opportunities through content creation and campaign development

· Experience developing a real-world marketing strategy from concept through implementation

· Mentorship from an experienced marketer, author, and entrepreneur

· Insight into the publishing industry and reader engagement strategies

· Flexible schedule and remote work experience

· Opportunity to receive academic credit through participating universities

Supervision & Mentorship

The intern will meet weekly with the author to review progress, receive feedback, discuss professional development goals, and refine the launch plan.

To Apply
Please submit to ChristinaMayJourney@gmail.com
1. A brief statement explaining your interest and any relevant experience

2. A resume

3. Links to any social media accounts, content, or projects you have created (optional)

Please submit materials before June 17, 2026.

Suggested Deliverable:
By the end of the internship, the student will deliver a comprehensive social media and content marketing strategy, a four-month launch calendar, audience growth recommendations, and a portfolio of sample content designed to support future book promotion efforts.

Academic Credit: The author is willing to work with participating universities to provide internship documentation, learning objectives, supervision, and evaluations required for academic credit.

Note: This internship could continue into the fall semester if mutually desired.

Last time I checked, nearly half of the New York Times nonfiction titles are memoirs or autobiographies. This is not a coincidence. I believe memoirs are booming in popularity in 2026 because in a world of ‘Instagrammed’ perfection and computer-generated content, people are craving authentic human connection, however they can get it.

Many of us like to hide our real life mess behind the curated reality we create on social media, but deep down we all know we are just as mixed up as the rest of the souls wandering the planet. When we read a memoir, we get a peek into someone else’s contradictions and complexity. Reading the arc of someone else’s experience reminds us that we aren’t alone.

This is what drew me to write my own memoir. I set out to understand why certain patterns kept repeating in my family across generations and I discovered that the only honest way to examine all of that was to put my own story on the page, mess and all.

Some of the memoirs I’m using as reference for “This Ends Here”

These days, there is something almost sacred about being let into someone’s intimate story. We aren’t sitting around the campfire or the kitchen table telling stories anymore. Sage advice is no longer passed from one generation to the next. Why would anyone need to hear stories from their elders if Google or AI can tell them anything they want to know?

But there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom.

This is one reason I included “Your Turn” prompts in my book: so readers can document their own mini memoir. Maybe one of you will decide to write your own life story!

Watching TV news, AI generated videos, and a constant stream of ads erodes our empathy and dehumanizes us. Reading about the rich inner world of another person, and their struggles to understand life reconnects us to humanity and our true self. A scar, a contradiction, a fraught decision… these are now differentiators.

People are starving for something that can't be generated, optimized, or faked. Memoir is the antidote to AI, HI: Human Intelligence. And it's the only genre of writing where being an amateur is actually an asset. Your credentials? A life lived and the bravery to share your truth. That’s it.

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. Click to read more about this ritual. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week…

In my father’s papers, I found letters written by my Grandpa Pipes in 1922, when he was imprisoned in Galway Gaol (the Irish word for jail). This was during a deeply painful moment in Irish history: the Civil War between pro-Treaty and anti-Treaty Republicans.

At this point in his life, my grandfather had already been on the losing side of the 1916 Easter Rising against the British, he had been imprisoned and sentenced to death in Kilmainham Gaol, where many of his contemporaries had already been executed, and he had survived hard labor camp at HM Lewes Prison in East Sussex, England. You can read more about this history in my book.

Now he was imprisoned again for political reasons, this time in Galway City, not far from his hometown of Derrydonnell, County Galway.

The letter reads as follows:

Jim Murray, No. 1526 Galway Prison, I.R.A.

November 13, 1922

Dear Mother,

Just a quick note to thank you for the parcel I received on Saturday. I got everything, shirt, socks, eggs, cake, and butter, and it was all very good. I was expecting a note with it, but maybe you forgot. We’re all in good health here.

We’re just thinking about the long November nights. We have everything we need here now. It’s a bit cold, but as long as the weather stays dry, I don’t mind. I hope it keeps that way.

They asked me to sign a form so I could get out. But I’m here for the same cause now as I was in 1916, and I didn’t sign then, so I’m not going to sign now.

The wind won’t change me. I took an oath to the Republic years ago, and I’m going to stick to it.

I don’t have much more to say this time. Give my regards to the lads in Derry. Tell them we’ll win yet.

Goodbye for now. Write soon. Love to all.
Jim

P.S. Send some eggs. We’re short of them here. We only get them every second day.

Here is another letter from him, undated, but from around the same time…

Dear Mother,

Just a line hoping to find you and all at home in best of health, as we are all O.K. here. Well I got all you sent in on Saturday. We had a great feed on the cakes and the rhubarb, it was fine. I got the razor also, it’s a topper too.

I got a whiff on Sunday and we laughed when we heard of Ned Flaherty & Ellie. I’d sooner be in jail than be in his boots anyway.

Did ye ever hear from Maryann since, or did she ever come home since I left? How are they all - did ye see any of them at all?

Say hello to all the lads in Derry. Anytime ye have any parcel to send, you could send them by Young’s cars. They could hand them in at the gate and ye not to be waiting to come to town yourself.

Send some stamps as I have to pay double if our letters are not stamped.

I must finish.
Write often. Send all news.

Jim

Contrast these letters with one written one year earlier by another inmate at the very same prison. It highlights my grandfather’s strength and stoicism, and how much he wanted to protect his mother from worrying about him.

One Galway inmate wrote to the editor of the Irish Independent to describe the conditions in the prison, which he referred to as a “death trap.”

He said, “There is scarcely a window in it that is not broken, The breeze, frost, and rain are inside in the cells whenever they are outside. The sunshine is practically debarred. Whenever a ray of sunshine enters the cells, which, indeed, is very seldom, a thick cloud of dust can be noticed floating about […] The cells are burrowed with mice, and we are often awakened by them trotting about and eating the food we get from our friends. Sometimes they run across our faces when we are sleeping. We have to spend nearly 20 hours in those cells every day. We did 21 hours a day solitary confinement since the truce was declared, and would be doing it still only for we fought against it. The lavatories are old and not working. They get out of order every second day. The result is that those parts of the prison are flooded’ (22 November 1921).” Source: Galway City Museum

Undated photo of Galway Gaol (click to see a computer rendering of the prison)

Reading my grandpa’s letters alongside another inmate’s account of the actual prison conditions reveals the kind of man my grandfather was: an anti-Treaty IRA man who refused to sign the pledge accepting the Free State, even though doing so would have earned his release from prison.

This unwavering conviction is a trait I saw in my own father.

I recognize it in myself too.

And I can already see that both of my boys carry that same fire.

It turns out trauma is not the only thing that gets passed down through the generations.

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. Click to read more about this ritual. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week…

Until I started healing work in my late 40s, I believed that if someone I loved wasn’t well, I had failed them. If someone near me spiraled, I should have stopped it. If someone I knew was suffering, it was my obligation to fix it.

This extended to me believing that I existed solely to make other people okay. My father adopted this attitude early in life and, because his influence on me was so profound, I thought it was a noble way to operate in the world. I truly believed that my life only had value relative to how I could help and support others. In this paradigm, my needs were never - could never - be prioritized until everyone around me was okay.

In reading my Grandpa Pipes’ letters from prison, along with the stories my father told about him, it became clear that he, too, believed his value was measured in service. Not just to his family and his community; he carried the weight of an entire nation on his shoulders. My dad inherited a profound sense of duty to those around him as well.

This intergenerational burden took root in me as the belief that my worth depended on my ability to anticipate, soothe, and stabilize.

Later in life, I found a name for this way of interacting with the world: I am what some people call an empath. An empath is someone whose nervous system learned to scan and respond to the emotional states of others.

In abusive households, attunement to the needs of others can matter more to survival than attunement to oneself. What looks like heightened intuition is, for some of us, actually finely tuned vigilance.

Fast forward to adulthood and, in addition to raising my children and running a consulting practice, I devoted much of my 30s and 40s to being of service to others. I ran nonprofits, served on boards, and advocated in support of causes like youth suicide prevention, childhood cancer funding, combating discrimination, and protecting vulnerable populations. I didn’t think of myself as exceptional or selfless. I thought this was just what you did.

A project I led in 2012 that raised $250K for Make-A-Wish Foundation

Don’t get me wrong: the work was real, and it mattered. It changed lives. I have emails, letters, awards, and other indications that people were positively impacted by my efforts. It felt good to give, but, for me, it also felt like the “right” way to be. No matter the cost.

Mahatma Gandhi said, “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Except I missed the part about finding myself. I just gave and gave and gave, often at the expense of my own needs, because I thought that was what goodness required.

As I started to heal childhood trauma, I realized that beneath that devotion to helping others was the belief that my life only had value when my energy was given away. These years of service weren’t misguided, exactly, but my nervous system equated worth with effort. Rest was akin to laziness. So I never rested.

My deepest fear was that if I stopped giving, I would become invisible; my life would no longer have significance. I know my father felt the same way, and I see evidence that my grandfather did too.

No one ever taught us that we had value just by being alive. Just by being us.

Your Turn…

Where has hypervigilance masqueraded as empathy in your life, and what would it feel like to turn that energy inward instead of outward?

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. Click to read more about this ritual. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week…

Family photos are strange little witnesses, aren’t they? They tell the truth, but rarely the whole truth. Without knowing much more than you’ve read in my previous Substack posts about my childhood, what can you glean from studying this picture?

In this post, I am sharing what AI sees in the photo as an outside observer and then what I see and know as the person who lived it.

What AI sees…

The child is posed, but not overruled by the pose; the small instrument gives them a part to play, and the dog beside them turns the portrait into a scene of companionship rather than display. Unlike a stricter family photograph, this one allows for personality. Its mood is domestic, affectionate, and faintly theatrical — a child trying on an identity, with the family dog as witness.

What I see…

This photograph looks, at first, like a cheerful childhood moment: a little girl with a toy guitar and her dog posed by a door. But the emotional truth of the image is more performative than meets the eye. This girl is me. My eyes are bright, yet my smile does not quite match them; it’s a half-smile that, to me, looks forced rather than felt. Notice that I am not playing the guitar, I am posing with it like it’s a prop.

I look like I am standing at someone else’s direction so they can snap a photo.

The most revealing figure in the image to me is my dog Heidi. Notice that she positioned herself between me and the photographer (likely my mother). Heidi looks less like a pet here than a watchful protector. The dog’s alert ear, forward stare, and tense posture suggest that she is monitoring the situation, standing guard.

I also notice the chipped paint on the door hinge and the sloppily repainted door (you can see previous colors peeking through). My parents did not have money to hire painters when I was young so they often did these types of projects themselves. It must have been December, judging by the holiday cards hanging on the door behind me. My mother always taped cards to the door like that. It was clearly early in the month because the cards are not yet to the bottom of the door, as they would have been closer to Christmas.

I see I’m wearing a turtleneck, but I’ve bunched it down around the base of my neck because I always hated turtlenecks - they felt suffocating to me. My mother dressed me in them anyway.

Seen this way, the photograph becomes an image of an uncomfortable little girl trying to please, and a dog who seems to understand that this child may need protection at any moment.

Grab one of your own family photos and try this exercise. Look at it as if you know nothing about the people in it. What do you see? If there is a photo you always avoid looking at, choose that one precisely because it makes you feel uncomfortable.

Run the photo through AI for an outside read. Is it accurate and does it align with how you think other people viewed your family? Sometimes the truth isn’t really hidden. We are just trained not to look directly at it.

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. Click to read more about this ritual. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week…

I’ve spent the majority of the past six months living alone in an 800 square foot cabin in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. Here I not only wrote the first draft of my book, but I experienced more profound personal healing than years of therapy could have ever provided.

I laughed.

I cried.

I rocked myself to sleep.

I danced.

I wrote hundreds of pages in my journals.

And I was uncomfortable a lot. Like a lot a lot.

But… it worked.

I started to heal.

And here is what I learned:

Stillness is essential (even for extroverts like me). When I first got up here I found the silence deafening. Every day I had moments of sheer panic… Who will I talk to? What if there is an emergency? What if I get lonely? I was so used to being surrounded by people, and catering to their needs, that I didn’t really know how to be alone. I remember the first time I went to the grocery store to shop for myself, I was befuddled. What did I even like to eat? I had no idea. Over time, without all of the noise around me, I started to hear my own voice again. I developed rituals and wrote invocations. I slowly began to come back into my body for the first time in decades. A friend of mine remembers me saying before I left, “I’m scared to be alone.” When I saw that same friend two months later, and she asked me how I was, I said, “I can’t wait to get back to my cabin!” She laughed at how quickly I had learned to thrive in solitude. One of the invocations I still recite every day is, “I embrace stillness as a threshold to my growth and expansion.” This from someone who always filled silence with doing, talking, performing, scanning. Never still.

Somatic healing is messy af. Anyone who thinks healing is merely, “deciding to move on,” or, “an attitude adjustment,” hasn’t experienced the release of deeply suppressed internal trauma. When you expel pain at the cellular level, it comes out of every orifice! I was glad to be alone so I could release the pain in whatever form was necessary in order to let it go. Often this meant bursting into uncontrollable sobs while typing a chapter. Sometimes it meant walking away from the manuscript to hide under my covers. Other times it was a tummy ache that wouldn’t let up. Because we don’t heal in a vacuum, some of my relationships became proving grounds where I tested out new ways of coping with triggers such as not being chosen, silence, guilt, needing to overfunction to feel valuable, and others. Sometimes I did well with my shiny new nervous system, and other times I failed miserably. Healing, for me, is not a straight line.

My cabin buried in snow this winter

I think clearest at 6AM wearing stretchy pants. Being a writer is not a 9-5 gig. There were days I woke up at 4AM with a brain that needed to get thoughts onto paper immediately. Other days I puttered around and didn’t start writing until 6PM and then wrote late into the night. Inspiration hits when it hits and you have to be flexible and ready to capture whatever ekes out at whatever time of day it happens. On the days I didn’t leave the cabin at all, I chose attire strictly for its comfort factor which led to some bizarre outfits. My wardrobe consisted primarily of long johns, baggy sweatshirts and warm socks. I went through two pairs of Ugg boots because I only took them off to sleep. Being physically comfortable helped me tolerate the discomfort of processing three generations of pain.

Having a sacred space to do this work helped me return to myself. Staying there is a whole different challenge; one I am currently undertaking. And guess what? It, too, is uncomfortable. A lot a lot.

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. Click to read more about this ritual. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week…

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Without knowing much more than you’ve read in my previous Substack posts about my grandparents or my father, what can you glean from this photo? Pause here. Really look. I invite you to do your own analysis of this photo, then read my take below. I ran the photo through AI to get an outside interpretation and then I shared my take based on what I know about my father’s childhood and their family dynamic.

Grandpa and Grandma Pipes with my father, approximately five years old, and his younger sister.

What AI sees in the photo…

The man on the left looks relaxed and mildly pleased. He seems to have a small, gentle smile, like he is trying to look pleasant for the photo without being overly expressive.

The woman on the right looks serious and composed. Her expression is more reserved, and she gives the impression of being focused on holding still for the picture rather than smiling.

The little girl in front on the left looks upset or uncomfortable. Her face is tense, and with her thumb in her mouth she seems shy, fussy, or possibly overwhelmed.

The little boy in front on the right looks subdued and a bit distracted. He seems less emotional than the girl, but not especially happy. He seems tired, shy, or just not interested in posing.

Overall, it feels like the adults are trying to present themselves properly for the photo, while the children seem less cooperative and more emotionally honest about not wanting to stand still.

What I see in the photo…

My grandfather smiles gently at the camera, composed, reserved, and kind. He leans in to pose with his family, holding his daughter gently enough that she can still lift her hand to her face. It feels like a moment interrupted, as if they had been walking and someone called out, “Let me take your picture.” The angle of her legs suggests he may have swung her around quickly to face the camera.

By contrast, my grandmother appears tense, almost rigid. Her expression reads as stern and unhappy, and her grip on the little boy (my father) looks tight, restraining. Painful.

The hat, the suit, and the Mary Janes suggest they were coming from, or going to, church.

My dad looks uncomfortable, not performing for the camera at all. He tucks his head down, averts his eyes, and wears a dour expression. He carries a book under his arm, which suggests that he anticipated needing to entertain himself, or perhaps retreat into himself. He never liked religion.

My father’s uncomfortable posture reminds me of how my son with ADHD looked when we tried to make him stand still for a photo when he was little. Standing still was excruciatingly difficult for him, so much so that he is often merely a blur in family photos.

Knowing what I know now about my father’s childhood, I can’t help but see the quiet retreat of a shy child already learning how to survive life with an overbearing mother.

Of course, a photograph captures only a fraction of a second in time. But sometimes that fraction reveals more than expected.

Try this exercise with one of your own family photos. Look at it as if you know nothing about the people in it. What do you see? What do you feel? Run the photo through an AI tool and see what others may see. Notice the gap between that reading and the real history you know from living inside the family. Awareness lives in that gap. So does the first step toward healing.

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. Click to read more about this ritual. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week…

This baby is finally ready to be born.

For the past six months, I have been holed up in a remote cabin in the Poconos researching, documenting, writing, exploring, healing, integrating, editing, and somatically releasing the trauma carried through three generations of my family.

Now, it is all out there.

Alive on the page.

Ready for the world to see.

I feel naked in my vulnerability, but I also feel empowered by owning my truth in a way I never have before.

But this project was never only about writing a book.

It is about creating a community where others can begin to examine the patterns in their own families. It is about learning how to break the cycles that become toxic inheritance. It is about offering proof that it can be done.

It can end here.

While it felt incredible to finish the first draft, I also found myself wondering how far from “done” I really am.

Getting a 350-page book written is one thing. Getting it published is another journey entirely.

Despite having a complete draft, I have not fully transitioned out of writing mode and into publishing mode. But that shift is beginning now.

As I consider which publishing path to pursue, I will be tapping into my network to speak with editors, agents, authors, and others who understand the memoir world. This is all new to me.

I am eager to get this book on shelves because I want it to reach the people who need it. I’ve shared only a very tiny portion of the book in these posts, and I cannot wait for you to read the rest.

If you know someone in publishing, I would love an introduction.

This book is ready.

I am ready.

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. Click to read more about this ritual. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week…

I should warn you: my ancestors had almost no imagination when it came to names. What they lacked in creativity, however, they more than made up for in trauma, which they passed down with extraordinary reliability.

My book is about four generations and what they each inherited from the one before. It begins with Generation 1, my grandparents, and continues through to Generation 4, my children. But I recently uncovered information about even earlier generations… my grandparents’ parents, and their parents.

If we all could reach far back down our family lines, we’d likely find many of the same difficulties repeating themselves in reliable patterns. Not to mention repeating names. The Irish are famous for that, but I had to laugh at just how spectacularly uncreative my ancestors were when it came to naming people!

We can count the generations by following the name James.

James (1) and Mary (née Byrne) Murray, my great-great-great-grandparents, about whom very little is known, had a son in 1821 named James (2). Their son, my great-great-grandfather, went to America at an early age and worked various trades. One story that has become family lore is that while James was laying track for the railroad, a piece of track fell on his hand and severed one of his fingers. Rather than lose the day’s pay, which at the time was a dollar, he wrapped his handkerchief around his bleeding finger and kept working. He knew there were always Irishmen at the worksite waiting for someone to get hurt or killed so they could take the job.

My great-great-grandfather did not drink and was, by all accounts, very frugal. He invested in several businesses and eventually did quite well for himself. He traveled frequently between Ireland and America and was able to lease land in the Irish countryside, where ownership at the time remained in the hands of English landlords. He eventually controlled three hundred acres of farmland. His house, built in the 1840s, had a slate roof, which was a sign of affluence.

James lived to be over 100 years old and his wife Bridget lived to be 84 years of age. Their five children were Timothy, James (3), John, Thomas, and Joseph.

My Great-Great-Grandfather, James Murray

Timothy, my great-grandfather and the eldest son of James and Bridget, was married to Margaret (Maggie) Murray (née Martin). They lived in Boston in the early 1880s and were well off, also traveling frequently back and forth between the US and Ireland. I have read many letters between my Grandma Pipes and her mother-in-law, Maggie, and my grandmother’s tone is one of dutiful respect. The women had a tradition of tucking shamrocks into their correspondence. Maggie lived to age 82.

My Great-Grandmother Maggie Murray’s Mass Card

Timothy and Maggie had five children, Thomas, John, James (4), who was my grandfather, Joseph, and Maureen. Sadly, three of them died at very young ages in tragic circumstances.

Thomas died when a well he was digging collapsed on him.

John died when he was struck in the neck with a hurling stick during a match.

Maureen died at age 12 during routine surgery.

Timothy died tragically as well. He was trampled by a runaway horse. Tim was reputedly drunk at the time. Apparently he did not inherit his father’s disdain for alcohol.

My grandfather became the man of the house at age 10. And what a house it was… in addition to their own five children, his mother Maggie ended up taking in five young children belonging to her brother when he and his wife died young from illness.

My great grandmother was a single mom raising 10 children in a house with only 2 bedrooms.

My Great Grandmother Maggie Murray

Only James (my Grandpa Pipes) and Joseph survived into old age. In fact, my mother remembers that when she was first dating my father, he flew over to Ireland to attend his “Uncle Joe’s” funeral.

In 2024, my sons and I visited the gravesite of these ancestors in Derrydonnell, Ireland. Finding the grave required the boys to hike through thick brush and cross someone’s field. In fact, my kids got locked into that field by mistake when the owners came by and closed the gate while I was driving down the road to look for another entrance to the cemetery. The farmers had no idea the boys were on their land. The field was protected by an electric fence so I had to find the farmer to come and open the gate to let my kids out. We explained why they were there, and the family connection, but the farmer was thoroughly unimpressed.

Timothy and Maggie’s eldest son, my Grandpa Pipes, had six children named… to no one’s surprise… Anne, James (5), who went by “Seamus,” the Irish version of that name, Timothy (called Pat for his middle name), John, Thomas (my dad), and Mary.

When my first child was born, I named him…. drumroll please… James (6). That means the James streak has lasted at least six generations.

Perhaps one of my sons, or one of their cousins, will name a son James one day.

Or maybe this, too, ends here.

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week… (click to read more about this ritual)

What happens to us in childhood does not vanish with age. In the mid-1990s, after studying more than 17,000 adults, researchers from the CDC and Kaiser Permanente uncovered a startling truth: our earliest experiences continue to shape the course of our lives.

Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs, can manifest later in life as chronic illness, mental health challenges, and reduced life expectancy.

Take this 10-question quiz to learn your own ACE score.

If you are curious about intergenerational patterns, take the quiz again with answers based on what you know about your parents’ childhood. Then take it once more for your grandparents.

What has been carried forward and passed down?

According to the research, adults with 4 or more ACEs show a much higher prevalence of health risks. Adults with 6 or more ACEs may have a significantly shorter life expectancy. Watch a short video about how ACEs affect a child’s development.

I carry 8 ACEs.

But my story is not just about harm. It is also about awareness. It is about healing. And it is about changing outcomes, not just for me but for the generations that follow.

My children carry 0 ACEs.

This ends here.

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. Click to read more about this ritual. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week…

Your Turn Prompts

Research suggests that patterns of stress, survival, and adaptation can be passed from one generation to the next.

Sometimes through behavior.

Sometimes through belief systems.

And sometimes, quite literally, through the body. (Read about epigenetics.)

In many ways, you are shaped by experiences that didn’t begin with you.

Throughout this book, I invite you to reflect on your own story alongside mine. These sections are labeled Your Turn. You can use this book as a guide for your own healing.

The only goal is awareness.

Before I continue to share my family’s story, let’s open the door to yours. You don’t need to have all the answers right now. Most of us don’t.

This is simply where the noticing begins.

You can write your answers down, sit with them quietly, bring them into conversation, or return to them later.

Your Turn

Describe the emotional tone of your childhood home in three words.

What is one story or experience from before you were born that shaped your family in ways you can still feel today?

Complete this sentence: “In my family, we learned to ______ in order to stay safe, be loved, or belong.”

They say the best way to heal ourselves is to heal each other. If you wish to share your answers with me, I will make them anonymous and compile them into a future blog.

My guess is that we are all more alike than we think.

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week… (click to read more about this ritual)

This is the fourth in a series of posts exploring the lives of four generations in my family: my grandfather, my father, myself, and my children.

This fourth post is Generation 4: My Children.

In the book, this chapter is told in a single composite voice representing my two sons. Here, I've let them speak individually.

Object #1: Oreo

I got Oreo, a stuffed dog, when I was six and my brother left for sleepaway camp. I was sad about him leaving for two weeks, so at the hotel where we stayed before camp drop off, my brother went into the gift shop and bought me this stuffed dog. I named him Oreo because of his coloring.

I cuddled Oreo every night my entire childhood. He went on every trip we took, his head sticking out of my backpack “so he could breathe,” I always said.

I loved that stuffed dog.

I now keep Oreo in a box of my favorite childhood things. But I wouldn’t let my mom seal the box… so he can breathe.

Object #2: Rubik’s Cube

Throughout my life, I have gone through a number of phases where I dive deep into an activity and eagerly try to absorb as much information as I can about a given topic. They’ve ranged from inherently trivial (Pokemon) to intellectually stimulating (memorizing pi), but the one that best sums up how my mind worked as a child was the Rubik’s Cube.

The colorful puzzle from the 1980’s was always an enigma to me. I had seen people solve them extremely quickly but couldn’t understand how! One day when I was in 8th grade, I decided that this would be the day I would learn. I locked myself in my bedroom with a laptop, a pad of paper, and a Rubik’s cube, and I proceeded to spend the next 12 hours memorizing, writing, analyzing, practicing, failing, trying again, and ultimately succeeding in understanding the step-by-step process to solve the puzzle.

I was proud of my determination and perseverance.

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Object #3: Les Miserables

As a kid, I always had a book in my hands. Whether at school, in the car, at restaurants, or even on hikes, a book was always within reach. The first book series I remember loving was Harry Potter, but the first real piece of literature I encountered was Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. This 19th-century epic of French literature tells the story of an ex-convict through a deep dive into history, society, and philosophy during a tumultuous era.

I discovered the book after watching the 2012 movie musical with my parents. The soundtrack quickly became an obsession for all of us. I remember my entire family spontaneously singing together out of nowhere, “Do You Hear the People Sing?” or “One Day More!” I dove into the 900 pages as soon as I got my hands on it. Despite its length, I was able to finish it in less than a month.

Object #4: Nintendo Switch

For my 10th birthday, my Grandpa Tom bought me the Nintendo Switch, which was brand new at the time. I remember having to share it with my brother until he got his own. We fought over whose turn it was constantly.

Those memories, playing “The Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild” or “1, 2, Switch!” are some of the most cherished with my brother.

Even now, nearly 10 years later, I still have that same Nintendo Switch. I still play those same games and remember a time when life was simpler, less stressful, and more youthful. Now there’s a Switch 2, a sign of the world moving on. But I still remember.

Their stories are lighter than those that came before. Because my children grew up inside something different.

This ends here.

Read the other posts in this series:

Life in Four Objects: My Grandpa Pipes

Life in Four Objects: My Father

My Life in Four Objects

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week… (click to read more about this ritual)

This is the third in a series of posts exploring the lives of four generations in my family: my grandfather, my father, myself, and my children.

This third post looks at Generation 3: Me. It is my life told through four objects.

Object #1: Raggedy Ann Doll

This doll was a childhood favorite of mine, ink stain and all. My mother hand-sewed Raggedy Ann’s clothing, and I had a dress to match. Making matching clothes for me and my dolls was something she did in the early years, before she became too busy and too angry for those kinds of crafts.

This doll was one of the few things I was allowed to bring with me the summer my mother kidnapped my brother and me and took us to Florida. She took us away from my father, the only person who had ever made me feel safe.

I cried myself to sleep at night during that time, clutching that doll which smelled faintly of ink from an uncapped marker. I missed my daddy. My grandparents spoke harshly to my brother and me and made it clear they didn’t want us there in their double-wide trailer. It was sticky hot in Florida those months. As much as I missed my dad, I was afraid that he would come try to rescue us, only to meet the end of my grandfather’s shotgun. He said it was waiting if my dad showed up.

I didn’t keep this doll all these years because she represented innocence. I kept her because she represented survival.

Object #2: Irish Passport

Just before moving to France in 1992 to help open Disneyland Paris as one of the original theme park cast members, I wrote in my journal:

“I think I want to be at Disney because I want to be a child again. I was robbed of my youth and I want it back. I want to be free like that again. I want to be young and innocent. There is no divorce at Disney. There is no abuse at Disney. How childish this sounds, but how true. No one can hurt me there.”

Moving overseas gave me distance from the chaos of my youth and a chance to live on my own terms.

Today, both of my children also have Irish citizenship, which allows them to live and work anywhere in the European Union. My eldest son is taking advantage of this privilege by moving to Belgium next month.

What began as my escape became something I passed on to my children, and the generations that follow.

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Object #3: Aladdin

When I was a senior in college, a cute boy asked me out on a date. Prior to him, I thought of guys as a distraction at best and a derailment at worst. Pregnancy would have condemned me to a fate similar to my mother’s, so despite my need for connection as a survival strategy, I avoided serious relationships entirely.

Until Aladdin.

We went to dinner and then to see the film, and it was the first time I actually wanted a partner. I didn’t have the language for it then, but I chose him because he felt safe.

Six years later we were married in a fairytale wedding in a castle up on a hill, just like in the film. Our wedding cake topper was a ceramic Aladdin and Jasmine statue.

That was the beginning of a whole new world for me.

Object #4: We Are In A Book by Mo Willems

When I picture the early days of motherhood, I think of reading with my boys. We Are in a Book! was one of our favorites. In the story, Gerald and Piggie realize they are characters inside a book. When they figure out that the reader is looking at them, Piggie becomes excited and makes the reader say silly words, while Gerald grows anxious, realizing the book will eventually end.

My kids loved it when I created animated character voices while reading. I would scream or whisper or adopt strange accents for effect, and they would wiggle and giggle beside me in delight. When they were old enough to read, they would each take parts and we would act out the stories together.

Those times with my boys nestled on either side of me were everything my own childhood hadn’t been: safe, nurturing, predictable. And like Gerald, I dreaded the day those moments would end.

These objects have stayed with me for decades because each one holds a piece of my story: the girl who survived, the teen who escaped, the woman who learned to choose, and the mother who built something different.

Life in Four Objects: My Grandpa Pipes

Life in Four Objects: My Father

Life in Four Objects: My Children

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week… (click to read more about this ritual)

This is the second in a series of posts exploring the lives of four generations in my family. This post looks at Generation 2: My Father, Tom. This is his life story told through four objects.

Object #1: The Baby Who Came with the Frame

My dad wrote in his memoir: “My mother had pictures of everyone but me hanging on the walls. The reason I think I was the only one of my siblings not hanging on the wall was because my mother bought a frame at Woolworth’s that had a picture of a baby in it. She thought the baby that came with the frame was better looking than me so she kept it in. We had a picture of a very cute but totally strange baby hanging on our living room wall my entire life.”

For my father, this small act symbolized how much his mother resented him from the day he was born until the day she died. I had no idea he had kept that picture of the unknown baby until I found it amongst his things after he died.

This frame must have been for him a quiet symbol of a mother’s love he never had and the wound he carried all of his life.

Object #2: His Brother John’s Memorial Program

Born only six years apart, John and my father were inseparable as children. John looked out for my dad, and in return my father was fiercely loyal to his older brother. My dad would even take beatings meant for John by distracting my grandmother so she would redirect her anger toward my dad instead.

One of the most painful moments of my father’s childhood was when John was sent away to high school in Ireland. It was a deliberate attempt by my grandmother to separate the boys because they were such close allies. My father wrote that his childhood became very lonely without John by his side.

My Uncle John died at the age of fifty-five - my age - from heart issues related to being an alcoholic for many years, although he had achieved sobriety when he passed. I was in college at the time and I had just visited my uncle with my then-boyfriend (now husband) a few weeks earlier.

After John’s death, my dad frequently talked about how much he missed his brother. He carried the belief that he should have been able to save John from alcoholism, a scourge that has run rampant in our family for many generations.

Object #3: His Jewelry Show Badges

Despite being a National Merit Finalist in high school, my grandmother refused to give my father the $20 application fee so he could apply to college. My father then tried to enlist in the Army, but they wouldn’t take him because of a childhood knee injury. With no other options, my dad went to work after graduating high school, at the age of 17.

After a couple of other minimum wage jobs, my dad eventually took a job sweeping floors at a family-owned jewelry business in the National Jeweler’s Exchange on 47th Street, aka “the diamond district,” of New York. As he tells the story, after a few months of working there, he stayed late one night and cleaned/rearranged the contents of all the drawers in the shop. The next day, none of the employees knew where anything was located, so they had to keep my dad around to help them find the things they needed to run the business.

My dad eventually became a jeweler himself and worked at that same business for more than forty years. A few times a year, he and his colleagues attended jewelry shows in Las Vegas or Florida to buy and sell estate jewelry. I accompanied him on one of these trips to Las Vegas. One night, we went to a dinner with his colleagues and there was a lot of laughter, storytelling, and fine wine. It was fun for me to see him goofing off with his ‘work family.’

My dad kept these badges with his important papers as souvenirs from his work family, the only real family he ever had outside of us kids.

Object #4: His Grandpa Tom Shirt

When my first son was born, we bought monogrammed polo shirts for each of the grandparents. My father wore his “Grandpa Tom” shirt proudly for many years. He loved his grandsons with the affection and devotion of a parent. He attended their concerts, sports games, birthday parties, school plays, and other events. He loved cheering them on - win or lose - and taking them out for ice cream afterwards.

My dad could not have been more proud of his grandsons. In loving them so completely, he may have been healing a small part of the childhood he never had.

My eldest son as a newborn in 2005 with both of his grandfathers

In the end, the objects my father kept reveal both the wounds he carried and the love he gave, both of which became part of what I inherited, and am now working to transform.

Read the others in this series:

Life in Four Objects: My Grandpa Pipes

My Life in Four Objects

Life in Four Objects: My Children

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week… (click to read more about this ritual)

This is the first in a series of posts exploring the lives of different generations in my family: my grandfather, my father, myself, and my children.

This first post looks at Generation 1: Grandpa Pipes. This is his life story told through four objects.

Object #1: His Spy Satchel

When my grandfather was fourteen, he took a job as a waiter in the dining car on the railroad between Galway City and Dublin to help supplement his family’s income. Around this time, leaders in Dublin were beginning to organize a rebellion against England’s occupation of Ireland. Because my grandfather traveled between the two cities every day, he was recruited to carry messages. Young and unassuming, he was unlikely to be suspected.

This is the satchel he wore tucked under the waistband of his trousers, carrying messages between revolutionary leaders in Galway and Tom Clarke’s tobacco shop in Dublin, the meeting place of the emerging freedom movement.

When he turned eighteen, he was sworn into the organization. Membership alone could result in imprisonment or death at the hands of British authorities, or even suspicion from one’s own comrades if secrets were believed to have been revealed.

His official enrollment paperwork was signed in 1914, two years before the 1916 Easter Rising that helped set the stage for Ireland’s independence.

Object #2: His Service Medals

Because of his role in the Irish revolutionary movement, my grandfather was later awarded these medals. The first two are 1916 Easter Rising medals, and the last two are Irish War of Independence Service Medals. These medals show that his service was formally recognized during the War of Independence, including the rare “Cogadh na Saoirse” bar awarded to a small minority of volunteers who were recognized as having taken part in active operations.

He wore his 1916 gold medal proudly throughout his life. When my father inherited the medals after my grandfather’s death, my dad displayed them in a case hanging on the wall of his home. When I inherited them, I gave them to my father’s sister Mary, his dad’s only surviving sibling.

Object #3: His Claddagh Ring

A Claddagh ring is a traditional Irish ring featuring a heart to represent love, a crown to represent loyalty, and two clasped hands to symbolize friendship. The design originated in a small fishing village outside Galway, making it an especially fitting symbol of my grandfather’s Irish roots, since he was born and raised in County Galway.

My father, a jeweler, gave this gold Claddagh ring to his father, who wore it for more than forty years. You can see how worn down the elements are from decades of constant wear. In the background of the photo, you can also see my father’s company address stamped on the envelope in which he kept the ring after his father died.

Object #4: His Pipe

When we visited, my grandfather always had a pipe resting in an ashtray beside him if he wasn’t actively puffing on it. When I picture him sitting in his recliner, I see smoke gently curling into the air beside him. Hence the nickname Grandpa Pipes.

I remember that his tobacco had a slight cherry scent. In my father’s memoir about my grandfather’s health he mentions that, despite a lifetime of tobacco use, my grandfather died at the age of 94 with clear lungs.

These four objects tell the story of the man I knew as Grandpa Pipes, and the legacy he left behind.

Life in Four Objects: My Father

My Life in Four Objects

Life in Four Objects: My Children

Each week, I release one inherited belief or burden as part of breaking the cycle in my lineage. The trauma that I am tossing into the Wishing Well this week… (click to read more about this ritual)