From The Heartstrings of The Inner Children: Poems About the Effects of Complex PTSD

From the Heartstrings of the Inner Children is a collection of one hundred poems written between 1982 and 2025, tracing the author's decades-long journey of self-discovery and healing. Through poetry, she sought to understand who she was-and why she once believed something was inherently wrong with her.

The collection is divided into four sections: Karren's Poems, Addiction, Codependency, and Inner Children. The author's first therapist, Dr. Ed Dietker, who treated her for agoraphobia, encouraged her to express her emotions through poetry after she wept during every session. At thirty-seven and unable to leave her home, writing became both a refuge and a release.

Over seventeen years, beginning in 2009, she also wrote an autobiographical trilogy: The Unseen Side of Me: A Journey from Disgrace to Grace (2009), The Evolution of Intimacy: A Personal Story (2019), and From Womb to Bloom: Integrating the Inner Child/Children (2025). While each book stands alone, this poetry collection serves as a companion to From Womb to Bloom, expanding on the lives of her five "inner children."

Through one hundred deeply personal poems, the author offers readers a window into the struggles and triumphs of growing up in a functioning yet dysfunctional family-and the hard-won peace that followed.