Donna's Blog: Writing to Heal
Exploring the Science of Emotion, Trauma, Health, and Healing
Thank you for joining me in my little corner of the web! I’m Donna Jackson Nakazawa, an award-winning science journalist and speaker passionate about exploring the intricate connections between neuroscience and human emotion. Over the years, my work has been dedicated to uncovering how our early life experiences shape our brains, bodies, and overall well-being. I’ve delved deep into the science of how trauma affects our health and how we can find pathways to healing.
I offer online courses that empower you to reframe your narratives and heal from past trauma through a powerful journaling process, based on the innovative, trauma-informed, mindful Neural Re-Narrating™ program I’ve taught at universities and behavioral health groups nationwide.
My newest book, The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal, a workbook that applies my writing-to-heal program through exercises and prompts, will give you the guidance and space to process painful thoughts, feelings and memories to bring you peace, healing, and hope.
Feel free to dig into my blog posts – past and present! If you find the information here insightful and valuable, I hope you will also join me on my Substack, Healing Together with Donna Jackson Nakazawa, where I aim to create a warm and welcoming space where we can further explore together the profound connections between our emotions, past experiences, and health. I will be sharing insights, stories, and science-based strategies, all grounded in the latest neuroscience research. For now, as I work on building an engaging and supportive community, all my articles and features will be FREE. I hope you’ll consider following and supporting my work as we build this meaningful space together.
My Online Courses
Your Healing Narrative
Write-to-Heal With Neural Re-NarratingTM
Breaking Free From Trauma
3-hour self-paced workshop
Available now!
Neuroscience-Based Writing Practices to Rewire Your Brain from Trauma
The trauma of your past can’t be undone, but you can take charge of how it affects you. This compassionate journal offers a safe space to help you process, heal, and reclaim your power.
Writing to Heal - Recent Blog Posts
- All Posts
- Angel and the Assassin
- Childhood Disrupted
- Chronic Illness
- holiday stress
- Neural Re-Narrating™️
- Subscribe
- The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal
- The Last Best Cure
- Unhealed trauma
- Writing to Heal
A new study in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology evaluated the relationship between how much partners felt appreciated, and how likely a marriage was to last over the years. They found that appreciation and gratitude between two people spirals up or down; the more a partner shows gratitude, the more their partner...
Recently, Stanford researchers put folks into two groups. One group went through a 9-week compassion course, the other didn’t. Afterwards participants who had taken the course were not only found to be more compassionate to others — they had more compassion for themselves. They liked themselves better by learning to be more compassionate to...
We’ve learned so much in the course of our lives. Math problems, how to punctuate a sentence, set the table, use an iPhone, hit the right buttons on our blog dashboard or twitter (okay, the latter three are still not so easy for some of us!). But can you remember exactly when you learned...
If you’ve read all my posts you know that I sometimes write about the amazing women who talk to me at my lectures, or who email me their stories about wanting to wrap in more joy in the face of life’s hurdles. And how I thought of them so much as I test drove...
For me, this is huge. You’re finally getting to see what I’ve spent the past two years of my life doing — researching, journeying, writing. I’ve described the book to you in a dozen ways but nothing can give you a better sense of what this book is about than delving into the book...
I am sitting here in an odd position. I am in bed with the flu, but the stomach flu can also mean all sorts of very un-fun things for me with my autoimmune condition. If you know my work you know exactly what I’m talking about. So I am trying really hard to do...
Every night we have a ritual at our house. I walk the ten footsteps down the hall to my son’s room, hug him as he sits in his desk chair, doing his forever-homework, and say, “Good night, I love you!” He sometimes mumbles the words back to me, but his arms squeeze around mine....
