Call for Stories: But Not Broken

Just a reminder that there is a month remaining in the open submission period for stories in this anthology. 

But Not Broken will be the second of the PTSD anthologies, taking up where Can't Go Home Again  left off. You can read more details about the ideas behind the anthology here, in my first call for stories. Stories should be sent to cedarlila at gmail dot com, with PTSD Story in the subject line. 

I am looking for stories of coping with cPTSD, either as it affects the main characters, or from the viewpoint of a loved one who needs the tools to live with the effects of prolonged trauma. Complex PTSD takes a heavy toll on those who struggle with it, and the idea behind the cover art is to offer hope and healing through the fictional characters who overcome being broken with the metaphor of kintsugi. Mended with gold. Not useless and worthless, but valued art all the more beautiful for the filled cracks. 

Send in your stories of the characters who have chosen trauma as their daily work - law enforcement, emergency medicine, first responders who volunteered to put themselves between the traumas of others and hold death at bay. Stories of those who had no choices, nor ready escapes, from abuse: children, women, men all alike. Stories of those who would not bend the knee to tyranny and paid the price for freedom, yet the dark miasma of that control trails in their wake when they are finally able to go on with their lives. The stories must be fictionalized, can be any genre - science fiction, fantasy, those are great ways to give some distance from reality while still modeling ways forward in emotional truths. 

There is hope. There is always hope, where there is life. For a survivor of years of trauma, the road is even more difficult to trace than the military transition to civilian life, where the focus of Can't Go Home Again lay. It can be done, and I'm standing here on the other side of that valley of shadow to say that with the assurance of a survivor. There is a way to be mended and whole, to be valued again. 

You may be bent, but not broken.