MY WRITING.
WOMEN, MADNESS, WHITENESS
Awakening from collective psychosis and healing familial and ancestral trauma.
As a young girl, Cristien witnessed her mother slip from reality, her suffering
shaped by trauma and interpreted as mental illness by a world that mistook
pain for pathology—answering distress with institutionalization and heavy
medication.
Women, Madness, Whiteness is a fiercely
intimate and incisive exploration of the
cultural, social, political and
intergenerational roots of mental illness.
As an adult, Cristien became a politicized
therapist, movement organizer, and
spoken word performer, discovering that
her mother’s madness was not an isolated
story but an inheritance—echoing through
ancestral lineages and entangled with the
enduring violence of white supremacy,
colonialism, capitalism, and modernity.
Women, Madness, Whitenesss is a powerful, embodied and poetic treatise about the collective and cultural inheritance of madness. Weaving together
poetry, essay, creative nonfiction, and memoir, Women,
Madness, Whiteness celebrates the tenacity and creativity of trauma survivors and
illuminates the painful, gritty process of individual, familial, collective, and ancestral
healing.
Once Upon A…Portals of Imaginal Practice
A collection of stories, poems, artwork, songs, incantations and fairytales exploring and cultivating practices of imagining beyond white body supremacy culture and colonialism.
This collection began like many things do, with conversations. These conversations over coffee, on walks, in between familial crises and celebrations, on breaks in workshops, and over Zoom calls explored how to cultivate practices of imagining beyond white body supremacy culture and colonialism.
These conversations revealed our shared longing to breathe life into radical hope and possibility without bypassing the brutal realities and struggle of power-over culture, both past and present. What emerged was an excitement to share the stories, poems, fairy tales, images, artwork, and incantations collected here in a small sampling of imagination practices.
Whiteness and white body supremacy culture are products of colonialism. 1Supremacy culture needs hierarchies to justify itself. These hierarchies, based on race, gender, ability, and other designated identities of worth and belonging, have been reproduced over centuries through brutality and oppression. Over centuries, colonialism and white body supremacy have continued to assert, expand, and entrench power-over ideology as the dominant culture.
And, over centuries, resistance struggles have continued to refuse the normalization of white body supremacy, the mainstreaming of power-over and authoritarian systems, and the “inevitable” and “natural” progress narrative of colonialism.
EMPOWERED BOUNDARIES
SPEAKING TRUTH, SETTING BOUNDARIES, AND INSPIRING SOCIAL CHANGE
An invaluable resource on boundary-setting practices for anyone looking to challenge our default social conditioning and create empowered relationships and communities. As there have been increases in violence against women, people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQI-identified people, there has been a corresponding demand for individual and community self-defense, boundary setting, and bystander trainings that are grounded in an understanding of the complexities and intersections of power and privilege.
Survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault are reporting that the current political moment is bringing up past trauma as well as emboldening attitudes of toxic masculinity and hetero-patriarchy, alongside an increase in incidents of violence and abuse. Boundary setting that is grounded in an understanding of gender-based oppression, violence, and liberation is necessary.
Explaining power and privilege and the links between individual safety and community safety, Cristien Storm shows how to set emotional boundaries that build a better world. Storm has developed boundary setting curricula grounded in resiliency and trauma-informed theories, and the book provides skills and exercises, such as Naming the Behavior, the Broken Record, Freeze Framing, the Reflective Loop, and Trusting Intuition, as well as examples from workshop participants.
Building vibrant social movements means understanding the links between individual safety and community safety. Boundary setting can be used, not just as a means for personal safety, but as form of solidarity, resistance, and inspiration for the future we keep fighting for.
