If we didn’t choose the trauma, how do we choose what happens next?

Life can fracture in a single moment, and the crack line often becomes the date we measure everything against: before and after. We’re reflecting on a powerful conversation with Tim Smith, author of Fault Line Still Standing, whose own fault line began with a kidnapping at six years old. His story opens the door to a bigger question many of us carry: if we didn’t choose the trauma, how do we choose what happens next?

We talk about why the event isn’t the whole definition of a life, and why “surviving” and “healing” are not the same thing. Healing isn’t linear, it can still hurt years later, and it rarely comes with a neat ending. We also name the quieter battle that follows trauma: the toxic story it whispers about your worth. Instead of “you’re damaged,” we practice telling the fuller truth, that you made it, you adapted, you found tools, and you kept going. Along the way, we connect this to neurodivergence, autism, FASD, adoption, grief, and the way identity can be shaped by hardship without being owned by it.

Then we pivot to what purpose looks like on the other side of the fault line: writing, storytelling, and building something new. Ann shares a personal update on the memoir Loving Differently, the Living Differently brand and resources, and a children’s book centered on Wren, a bird who flies differently and discovers that different can be beautiful. If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share it with someone who’s rebuilding, and leave a review so more people can find it.

Transcript

Meeting Tim And Naming The Break

SPEAKER_00 0:23

I just did an episode with a man named Tim Smith, and he wrote a book on fault line still standing. And his fault line was a very definable moment in his life when he was six years old. And we really related. I really loved talking to him. What really stood out to me was not just his story or anything, but it was the actual title, fault line. You know, we all have fault lines. Maybe yours wasn't a kidnapping like Tim's. Maybe it was the death of someone that you loved, a divorce, an abuse, a diagnosis, a betrayal, an adoption, a child with special needs, a miscarriage, a phone call. Whatever it was, there was a life before and then a life after. And it was never the same. You know, I've interviewed, I can't even tell you how many people as a journalist before my, you know, in one of my old lives and now on the podcast, but so many different stories, different backgrounds, different pains. But almost every single one, every person can point to a moment when everything changes. The interesting thing is that we often think that the event is what defines us, and it isn't. It is something that was like, and I often think of a tree, you know, where there's the lines around the tree and it says, you know, how old they are. But I think of like maybe an axe that went into the tree, and that never goes away. It's still always there, but the tree continued to grow, and it might have looked a little different than it originally would have, but it still had a full life, it was still able to thrive.

Mile Markers And Life After Trauma

SPEAKER_00 2:36

I think when we come out of a fault line, or what I told him after we taped was I always called them mile markers. And it doesn't have to define us. Trauma does change us, but it doesn't have to write the final chapter or be the end of the story. Tim and I got to talk a little bit after, and I often on the podcast talk about losing my dad at 11 years old. It's it's like a the way that I always say it is, I lost my dad when I was 11. I mean, it's just it's like a full sentence. It's like lives in me. It's like the moment in time when life's changed as I knew it. And when I was adopted, the fact that I'm autistic and have fetal alcohol and have, you know, other disabilities. One of the other ones was that believing that my dad was buried alive, the way that I struggled in school, the way that I was raised in trauma. But the most important thing about every single one of those, and I could go on actually, but the most important thing about Tim or about myself, and what I got the most out of the episode was that we survived every single one of those things. And surviving and healing are not the same. I mean, we did, and you will hear on this episode with Tim how healing is not linear and healing still hurts, and healing is never done, and even after it still hurts. So for years I simply did just walk through the motions, but even though I was just going through the motions, I was heading toward healing, and I was doing the best that I could. I want to really say that again. Survival is not the same as healing. You know, we don't get to choose what that fault line is. It it's inevitable. Every single person has one, every single person will have more. You don't get to choose what they are most of the time. I didn't choose autism, I didn't choose for my children that I adopted to have the trauma that they have. Tim didn't choose what happened to him. You, I'm sure, didn't choose yours either.

Choosing The Story After Survival

SPEAKER_00 5:24

But we do get to choose what happens after. Other people's definitions can stay with us. They can whisper in our ear all the time. You're not enough. No one will love you. You're not good enough. You'll never recover. You're damaged, you're too much. But then we can say the greatest battle isn't always what happened. Sometimes it's believing the story trauma wrote about you. And you know what that story is? That you survived, that you made it. It's not the trauma itself, it's who you became and how you got through, and that you persevered, and that you're a better person, and that you had the tools to be able to get through, and you figured it out. It showed your strength and your bravery and your courage. Those are the stories that the trauma wrote. You know, I found purpose. I found writing. Writing, in fact, my voice was the weakest thing, and we talk about this too. It was the weakest thing in my life. Writing was the weakest thing in my life. Those became my strengths. Isn't that crazy? You know, I found purpose, I found journalism, I found being able to tell my story, even though I was silenced. And I found a way to be able to um tell it in a way that helps others tell their stories. I found Tina. And Tina is such a blessing to me. I found this microphone. Every single one of these things became another step away from the definitions that were given me. They allowed me to help me find my voice through writing and eventually through the podcast. We become, in spite of, in spite of, I still loved. I still became a mom. I still earned a master's degree, even though I was told I wouldn't even graduate high school. I still became a journalist. I still found my voice, not because life became easy, because it didn't, but because purpose became louder than pain. I figured out how to do the work that I love. I don't know where your fault line is, but if you're listening today, I hope you hear this. Your worst day does not have to become your identity. Your diagnosis is not your identity. Your abuse is not your identity, your divorce is not your identity, your addiction is not your identity, your grief is not. Those things become chapters, not the title of your life. Tim's book reminded me that life can fracture in a moment. What I loved most about his title was still standing. You know, but fracture doesn't mean the story is over. Sometimes they become the place where healing begins. It's the place where purpose begins. And maybe that's what surviving, in spite of, really means, not pretending that the fault line never happened, because it did, but choosing one day at a time to keep building anyway.

Announcing Loving Differently And A Brand

SPEAKER_00 8:58

And I have a little secret, and this is really exciting to me. And I'm gonna cry. I just created I wrote a memoir. You guys all know that. I wrote a memoir, it's called Loving Differently. I swear I just it just it didn't just come to me. This has been getting to this point. I ended up creating an entire brand off of the memoir loving differently into living differently. And I'm just about ready to launch it. The brand logo itself, I'm so proud of. And I can't wait to share it. And I'll put it on here. So if you want to see it, you have to go on the video itself. But of course, it's gonna have something to do with trees and books and the story and the roots where we're rooted, where we're planted. So I was really proud of the logo that I came up with. And I'm also really proud of the very first children's book that I wrote. And trust me, this was not easy, but it was such a great experience for me because birds, I'll tell you what, this is also another little fact about me. Birds are probably one trees and birds. So in my very first children's book, it had to be about a bird.

Aunt Bertie Birds And Writing Wren

SPEAKER_00 10:53

One of my favorite people in my entire life was my aunt Bertie. And that's not her real name, and I'm not gonna give you her real name, but she was a a fierce, she was a fierce lady for her age, time for the she was a fierce lady for that day and age. She stood up for what she believed in, she protested, she did things that most women in that day and age would not have done. And I've always admired her. And one of the things that she used to do with me was sit and look at the birds. And she had a bird book, which I have to this day. I ended up with it after she passed away. And she would go through this book with me, and I wasn't able to say her name when I was really little, so she just became Aunt Bertie until the day she died. I mean, even to this day, she is Aunt Bertie. And so it doesn't surprise me that when I was thinking about a children's book and the character that I wanted to portray, that it was a bird. And the bird's name is Wren, because even though she is a she, um, she represents all of us. And I wanted I wanted her to be able to represent all of us. And she just doesn't fly like every all the other birds, she doesn't do life like all the other birds. But what's really amazing about it is that because she does fly differently, she ends up in places that the birds other birds don't end up, and she sees things that the other birds don't see. And she learns that her way of flying is beautiful and she soars just the way she is. So this one is coming out very soon, and it's going to be under the publishing company Living Living Differently Resources, which is an imprint that I have created, and I'm very proud of it because I already have started the next children's book, and I'm not going to tell you about that one, but it does have another bird in it.

Publishing Plans And What Comes Next

SPEAKER_00 13:26

So I'm really excited about all of this and my memoir that will be coming out. It's pretty big. Um, but I can't wait to get it out. And I've realized as I've been trying to do this process, that I've been building to here all along, and I'm so proud of where it is. And I really did think that I was gonna try to go the traditional uh publishing route. But then I was like, you know what? But I have this logo and I have this brand and I have this publishing resources that I want to do, along with so many things that go along with these books and this memoir and the children's books. And I even have um an idea for some teen book, a teen book that I've already started on. So I'm really excited, and it's a little secret of living differently, resources and loving differently coming out, and the little bird who flew differently. So I just, you know, as an autistic individual, as a person that has lived with FASD and neurodivergence all of her life, I've realized that different is awesome. All right. Thanks for tuning in, and we will see you next time.