Secondary Traumatic Stress Archives

Writing Trauma Survivors in Fiction: What the Case File Doesn’t Ask

By Wordsmith Andi | July 18, 2026 by Wordsmith Andi

A note before you start: this piece references suicide disclosure, child loss, and family separation, drawn loosely from a year spent taking eligibility calls for the state of Indiana. No detail here identifies a real person — specifics have been altered and composited. If any of it lands hard, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text, 24/7. Writing trauma survivors in fiction started, for me, as a way of asking…

The Voice at the Threshold On Liminality, Phone Work, and the Stories We Carry Across the Line

By Wordsmith Andi | June 27, 2026June 27, 2026 by Wordsmith Andi

I never see their faces. That is the first thing people seem surprised by when I describe my work as an Eligibility Specialist in a regional change center. There is no waiting room, no desk across from mine, no eye contact over a stack of forms. There is a phone. There is a voice on the other end. And there is, almost always, a person suspended in the middle of something — reaching out from…