Dragons & Disco Socks

DRAGONS AND DISCO SOCKS is a memoir. It has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Actually, that is a lie. It has several beginnings. I die in the opening scene. I know the first rule of memoir writing is to avoid writing about your whole life, but instead choose a slice of your life to detail. The narrower the better. I did not do this. Before you move on from here to the countless other books you could read, I want to tell you why I broke the basic rules of memoir.
Until recently, my life was largely defined by an event that happened while my nineteen-year-old mother was pregnant with me. As she fumbled in the kitchen making dinner for her new husband, the frying pan caught fire. Two years later, my mother would think of this moment while looking at my dead body on the operating table. While the priest blessed my frail and broken frame, she would blame herself for being so careless in the kitchen that day.
Forty-six years later I am at a summer party getting out of a Jacuzzi. When the host hands me a towel he notices the scars from my surgeries at two years old.
"Whoa, what happened to you? Did you get shot?" He thoughtlessly reaches out to touch one of the deeper holes in my chest. I flinch and pull away instinctively.
I have no recollection of what happened afterward. From this point forward, I develop a mild form of post-traumatic stress disorder. This will be the third time I've developed symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress in my adult life. This time, I decide it is time to heal from my past. I embark upon a quest to defeat the monsters under the bed of my subconscious. I'm tired of them pulling the rug out from under me.
I find a guide who helps me resurrect my childhood imaginary friends. Together we set out on an adventure inward to rescue a child-part of me held captive by the Sparkly Man and Really Headless Joe… or so I think. Through Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), these adventurers and I experience heartaches, meet new allies, and learn how to work together. Will we succeed in bringing the abused child-part to safety? Or, will we discover another mission altogether? These adventures all occur within a two-year span, and yet, each chapter revisits an Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) from the first 8 years of my life.

William J. Koehler, PhD, LCSW is owner of Journey to a Trauma Informed Life, LLC, and Assistant Professor of Social Work at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania. He began serving as a trauma-informed clinician in 2005 and has since become a respected trainer, instructor, researcher, and consultant in his field. His specialty areas are working with the LGBTQ+ community and helping children and adults exposed to childhood violence and abuse.