How My Journey Began

In his fifties Hinch has a knee replaced and experiences a startling development. A distant, once-submerged memory from age 3 bubbles up into the present. It is a memory of being traumatized in the bathtub at age three. A door opens, he passes through and discovers he’ll never again step back through that door.

A few days later, he sits at his desktop and begins writing about this early life trauma. He looks down at the keyboards to see they are awash in tears. And, so begins what he’ll discover is a second set of challenges emerging from the cruel and degrading childhood he lived through in a foster home placement.

Earlier in life he’d given thought to becoming a writer. But, that all seemed so far away and undoable. That changed on day two after the knee replacement. He began reading about ptsd and about development trauma. He took poetry-writing classes at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. He met a poetry teacher and poet who invited him into a low-residency creative writing program in Colorado. He took the dive, and, so began an entire second chapter of this yet-developing life.

He now almost constantly reminds himself: I am not broken, I am challenged, and, I’m up for meeting those challenges. I write about this. I speak about this. I live a more open, artistic life. One in which I share more of myself and my story of healing through the biggest battle I have ever known. And, guess what? I’m here to say ‘recovery from childhood trauma is both doable and thrilling!