Writing Your Resilience: Building Resilience, Embracing Trauma and Healing Through Writing
The Writing Your Resilience Podcast is for anyone who wants to use the writing process to flip the script on the stories they’ve been telling themselves, because when we tell better stories about ourselves, we live better lives.
Every Thursday, host Lisa Cooper Ellison, an author, speaker, trauma-informed writing coach, and trauma survivor diagnosed with complex PTSD, interviews writers of tough, true stories, people who've developed incredible grit, and professionals in the field of psychology and healing who've studied resilience.
Over the past 7 years Lisa has taught writers how to write their resilience. Each time her clients and students have confronted the stories that no longer serve them, they’ve felt a little safer, become a little braver, and revealed more of their true selves. Now, with this podcast, she is creating a space for you to do this work too.
Equal parts instruction, motivation, and helpful guide, Writing Your Resilience is an opportunity for you to join a community of writers and professionals doing the work that helps us cultivate our authenticity and creativity.
More about Lisa Cooper Ellison: https://lisacooperellison.com
Get Your Free Ditch Your Inner Critic masterclass—your shortcut to a confident, S.H.I.F.T.ed mindset: https://lisacooperellison.com/subscribe/
Episodes
122 episodes
Building a Writing Career from Trauma: Book Launches, Platform Growth & Healing with Tia Levings
What does it really take to build a writing career out of your hardest story and stay whole while doing it? In this episode, I sit down with author Tia Levings, whose memoir A Well-Trained Wife has become an increasingly timely reckoni...
Why Writers Struggle to Find Flow — and the Simple Practices That Bring It Back
What does it really take to get into a state of creative flow and what pulls us out of it? In this Editor's Round Table episode, I’m joined by fellow editors Sarah Chauncey and Lynn Shattuck to explore the Law of Increasing Flow: a framework bu...
How to Stop Controlling Outcomes and Start Surrendering: Tools for Writers and Creatives
About this episode: Have you ever come to a point in your life where giving up was the way forward? If so, how was that different from defeat? In this episode, I unpack what healthy surrender really means, how it can actually strengthen r...
How to Discover Your True Writing Voice with Jeannine Ouellette
About this episode: This week, I’m joined by Jeannine Ouellette, author of The Part that Burns and a writing instructor whose deepest passion is using writing to connect us with our humanity. She sees the craft of writing as so ...
Silenced No More: How to Write the Story You've Been Afraid to Tell with Meagan Justus
In this Ask Me Anything session, writer and advocate Meagan Justus brings two questions that so many writers are quietly wrestling with. 1st: when you keep circling the core of your story without being able to reach it, do you shape what you ha...
Healing Your Ancestral Trauma: How Family Constellations Work Can Free You from Stories That Aren't Yours with Tania Gonzalez-Ortega
What if the stories we tell about ourselves aren't really ours, and what if we could finally trace them back to where they began? This is something I’ve been asking myself for years, and today I’m excited to share a few ways you can answe...
Human Design for Writers: How Understanding Your Design Unlocks Resilience, Creativity, and Deeper Healing with with Jessica Eure
What if the key to unlocking your creativity wasn't about doing more but about finally understanding who you are? In this episode, trauma therapist Jessica Eure and I explore how Human Design is transforming the way we wo...
Find Your Life's Purpose One Feeling at a Time: A Human Design Approach to Alignment
Resources for this Episode: Get Your Free Human Design Report Ditch Your Inner Critic Now&nb...
How I Escaped Iran & Wrote My Way to Freedom | My Name Means Fire Author Atash Yaghmaian
What if the condition that made your life unmanageable was also the source of your greatest gifts? In this episode, I sit down with Atash Yaghmaian, a therapist, activist, and author of My Name Means Fire, to explore how writing became...
Creative Intuition: The Skill That Makes Life and Work Easier
Would you like to know when to say yes or no, how to tell which piece of feedback is right for you or your book, or how to proceed with greater ease? If you’re working on a book, would you like to spend more time having your characters tell you...
How Writers Keep Going When They’re Exhausted, Overwhelmed, and Doubting Themselves
How do you keep the faith when your nervous system is fried, your heart is tired, and the world feels like too much? In this editors’ roundtable episode, I’m joined by Kristin Sancken and Lynn Shattuck for an honest conversation about wha...
How to Write a Memoir When You Don’t Remember Everything (Memory, Trauma & Emotional Truth) with Sue William Silverman
What do you do when the memory you need most for your memoir is the one you can’t quite reach? You listen to this week’s guest, Sue William Silverman. Sue is the award-winning author of nine works of nonfiction and poetry and co-chair of the MF...
Can You Trust Your Memories? What Neuroscience Reveals About Trauma, Story, and Healing with Stacey Simmons
Listeners, do you ever wonder if your memories are real? Are you writing a memoir and struggling to remember something—or worrying that what you’re sharing might not be “the truth”? Today on Writing Your Resilience, I’m joined by psych...
How to Write About Trauma Without Traumatizing Your Reader with Melissa Fraterrigo
Writers, are you writing about trauma and wondering how detailed to get or how to connect the dots when your story feels scattered? The solution might be a memoir in essays that allows you to write about powerful discreet moments that are...
Memoir Writing Mistakes: Why “This Happened, Then This Happened” Isn’t a Memoir with Wendy Dale
This week, I’m joined by Wendy Dale, the author of The Memoir Engineering System, for a conversation that will change the way you think about structure, scenes, and what actually makes a memoir work. We talk about why “this happened, t...
Entering the Fire Horse Year: The 3 Things Writers Must Do to Reclaim Momentum
As we step into 2026, many writers feel ready to begin—yet remain stalled or exhausted from the year before. In this episode, I show you how to reclaim momentum through creative alignment and the one thing you must do to harness your success. W...
Encore Episode: Breaking the Silence with Melanie Brooks
In this encore conversation, author and teacher Melanie Brooks and I explore the lifelong impact of silence—within our families, our communities, and our writing lives. Drawing from her memoir, A Hard Silence, Melanie shares how unspok...
Encore Episode: Writing about Absent Fathers and Attachment Styles with Acamea Deadwiler
Join me and Pushcart Nominee, TedX Speaker, and multi-passionate creative, Acamea Deadwiler for this encore episode where we talk about normalized violence, how our attachment styles can influence the way we approach our memoirs, and the import...
Encore Episode: Crafting the Personal Essay and Resilient Editing Tips with Andrea Firth
Join me and Andrea Firth for this encore episode of the writing your resilience podcast where we explore what personal essays are, how writers can uncover their essay’s aboutness, and how to develop resilient editing practices. As an added bonu...
Encore Episode: Writing Through Shame: Hannah Sward on Memoir, Resilience, and Being Present
Join me and Hannah Sward, author of Strip: A Memoir, for an encore episode where we go behind the scenes of her writing process—how she wrote her first draft by hand, in one long, unfiltered sentence; how she found the courage to put her full t...
100 Episodes Later: 10 Lessons Every Writer Needs
What happens when you commit to showing up—again and again—for your writing life? In this special bonus recording in celebration of my 100th episode,, I reflect on ten years of creative work and the ten lessons I learned about growth, resilienc...
What If You're Not Meant to be the Hero of Your Memoir: How Writers Reclaim Their Sovereignty with Stacy Simmons
Have you been trying to fit your life story into the hero’s journey and find it’s just not working? What if it doesn’t fit the mold because you were never meant to be the hero, but rather you were meant to be the queen? In this 100th episode of...
Stop Forcing the Silver Lining: Why Writers Need Real Emotional Truth with Dr. Risa Ryger
What if the pressure to “find the silver lining” is actually keeping you from healing?In this episode, Dr. Risa Riger and I unpack the subtle—and sometimes harmful—ways toxic optimism, avoidance, and “bouncing back” culture disconnect us fr...
Your Memoir Isn’t Too Weird: How to Write the Mystical with Confidence with Linda McKittrick
Many writers find themselves wrestling with experiences that fall outside linear time, logic, or the way stories are “supposed” to unfold. In this final Ask Me Anything episode of 2025, I sit down with my student Linda to talk about how to weav...
Gratitude, Grief, and Growth: What Frida Kahlo Taught Me About Resilience
Holidays can bring out the best—and the hardest—parts of being human. In this special Thanksgiving episode of Writing Your Resilience, I share stories from joyful celebrations and heartbreakingly difficult years to remind you that what...