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
- Neural Re-Narrating™️
- The Adverse Childhood Experiences Guided Journal
- The Last Best Cure
Yale University researchers have found that even among healthy individuals, stressful, adverse life events lead to shrinkage in the parts of our brain that help us to manage our emotional reactions. If we’ve had a lot of stress in our lives — financial hurdles, chronic illness, loss of a relationship, you name it —…
I just received this website email, from a reader friend named Amy. I asked her if I could excerpt a little bit of it in my blog. Amy is 46-years-old, a dynamo really, who suffers from quite a few chronic conditions. You would never know it to see her. She is beautiful, vibrant, raising…
A new study on women in mid-life finds that women who have an inner sense of “Life Force” have lower levels of cell-damaging stress hormones and cytokines, such as IL-6. “Life Force” may sound like something out of the annals of Star Wars’ Jedi training, but it’s up-to-the-minute neuroscience (in this case, from the…
In 1994 the Women’s Health Initiative set out to do the largest study of the relationship between our state of mind — an optimistic state, or a pessimistic world view — and cardiovascular disease to date – on ninety-seven thousand women. These women, who were healthy at the start of the study, were followed…
“A sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ,” John Steinbeck once wrote. Steinbeck’s words are more true than we might ever have imagined. The neuroscience I unveil in The Last Best Cure shows how our state of mind dictates the state and health of our cells. When we are psychologically…
… that I need to make sure to tell you what she had to say when she read an early copy of The Last Best Cure. When I finished writing The Last Best Cure I asked my friend P., who is a well-known neuroscientist, to read the manuscript and make certain I had every…
There is a big moment in every author’s life, and it happens only once, with each book we publish. Today my friendly UPS guy knocked on the front door and smiled as he handed me a package. I peered at the return label and saw my publisher’s address: 375 Hudson Street, Hudson Street Press.…
Today’s post is something of a P.S. to yesterday’s. When I was growing up, my Dad had a saying: “Let’s make a memory.” He’d say it right before he’d take us off on some impromptu adventure, like sailing out from our creek into the Chesapeake Bay on a Friday evening, so we could spend…
