Renovating a life with foundational issues

How trauma, grit and grace can transform shaky ground to solid footing.

In the month since Donald Trump became only the second Republican to win the popular vote since 1988, I won an 18th century farmhouse at auction in Rappahannock County, Virginia, despite losing the bid, and had abdominal surgery to try to fix 20 years of pain. The story of the auction is a book in itself. It marks the beginning of my future. The story of the surgery appends a chapter written in Cambodia when I was 23, a cub reporter in love with a political activist, clueless that I was pregnant and on the verge of death. It follows roads taken and rerouted.

Both plots involve characters who by chance or by fate danced with me on a bridge between past and future, changing the course of my life.

We all have our bridges.

I crossed one in Feb. 2004. While the U.S. justified its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as fights for freedom, Cambodian doctors — who had lived through U.S. bombing campaigns during the Vietnam War decades earlier — saved my life in a small operating room in Phnom Penh. I’d arrived at the clinic on the back of a motorbike driven by my love, a Cambodian activist advocating for democracy and human rights in the shadow of an authoritarian regime. I would have died alone in my apartment had he not made a surprise visit from his rural post four hours away. My skin was gray when he found me. We learned at the clinic that I was pregnant, that the fertilized egg was stuck in the fallopian tube, and that the tube had ruptured. I was internally bleeding to death.

Ectopic pregnancies are the leading cause of maternal mortality within the first trimester of pregnancy. Mine was caused in part by endometriosis. In the U.S., treatment for the condition is legally allowed even in states with the strictest abortion bans, yet some health professionals have refused or delayed care to women because they’re afraid of being imprisoned or fined for doing something wrong. In Cambodia, I grew accustomed to misinformation carrying deadly risks. It’s chilling to see the fear of an oppressive climate seep across America.

Teetering on the edge of nonexistence has a way of sharpening and clouding one’s vision. For me, it can make everything and nothing feel like a big deal. I can be calm under intense pressure but worry that my gas pains are fatal. My friends would agree for different reasons.

I’ve come to understand that both dissociation and hypervigilance are symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Mentally disconnecting from an experience allows a person to continue functioning while enduring fierce conditions they can’t escape. Many survivors of war, torture and childhood abuse know this state. They may also know what it’s like to constantly scan for danger, yet put themselves in risky situations since stress feels familiar or not too bad. Veterans can be prone to this, not only because of their exposure to combat but because as children, they’re reported to have experienced higher rates of abuse, violence, neglect or substance misuse at home than men and women who don’t go into the military. The service is a way to escape.

Each of us in that operating room in Phnom Penh 20 years ago had something in common that led us to that moment: Trauma and grit — resilience with a purpose. The doctors had survived war. My love was born in a labor camp during the Khmer Rouge genocide and grew up amid political and personal violence. Intergenerational trauma, abuse and mental illness shaped my family. In our own ways, we were each trying to reduce the suffering of others because of the pain we knew so well.

It reminds me of the words of American abolitionist Frederick Douglass, which my colleagues Ijeoma Njaka and Duncan Peacock have reflected on. Douglass observed in the 1860s that, “Poets, prophets, and reformers are all picture-makers — and this ability is the secret of their power and of their achievements. They see what ought to be by the reflection of what is, and endeavor to remove the contradiction.”

What’s missing from this frame is how the pain of poets, prophets and reformers shape their vision and approach. The ability to imagine a better world often comes from deeply personal experiences of suffering and injustice. This can fuel empathy, creativity and determination. But if left unexamined, that same pain can unintentionally distort the picture-making, creating the potential for harm even in the pursuit of noble goals.

As a kid in Maine, I fled home at 16 and was in such a hurry to feel better that I tripped and almost died in my 20s. The pain from that was terrible, so I rushed to not feel bad again. The future plans I was drafting had an unsteady foundation. In my 30s, I thought rugged individualism was how not to hurt. This required divorce and the dismissal of anyone I didn’t think had experienced “real” hardship. It also required hiding my emotions and not asking for help. No one lets you down that way. In my 40s, I still stand by the divorce but have softened on everything else. I’ve come to understand that grief is a gift. Anger can be, too, with the right outlet and support to understand it. I see now that not everyone will experience trauma like I and so many others have, thanks goodness. But most humans hurt, want to feel better and are tripping and falling along the way. All of us benefit from giving and receiving grace.

When I learned recently that surgery might ease the pain lingering from the internal scars of my ectopic pregnancy, I didn’t treat it as a physical procedure alone. I took the opportunity to honor what I’d been through psychologically. I remembered what it was like to be 23, dying in a foreign country, sewn back to life by the hands of strangers. I grieved for my young self and how alone, angry and afraid she felt. Then I showed her that things are different now: I asked for and accepted help. I have felt so safe, nourished and loved by friends and family throughout my recovery that entering the second half of my life feels like a new beginning on a fortified foundation.

The renovation of the farmhouse will play a central role in this next chapter. It came into my life through another bridge I’ll tell you about someday. Restoring the house will be a slow process of uncovering, repairing and reimagining. There will be plenty of room for poets and prophets and reformers, as well as farmers and veterans and children. There is a barn, and maybe one day it will have sheep. The animal kind. For humankind, I will feed compassionate, curious souls who have independent thoughts and differences of opinion. Grain — and people — are not meant to stay in silos forever.

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Kate Woodsome stands with an empty easel in front of her soon-to-be barn in Rappahannock County, Va., November 2024. (Photo by Amanda Mustard.)

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Hi, I’m Kate…

I’m a writer, filmmaker and reformer focused on the relationship between mental health and democracy. I’m happy to connect on Instagram and LinkedIn, and if you’d like to chat about endowing this work with a tax-deductible gift, please reach out to me at kate@katewoodsome.com.

At The Washington Post, I won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service with colleagues covering the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack. I also pioneered a mental health column and led a video production team. In Dec. 2023, after 20 years in newsrooms, I left The Post, no longer willing to normalize the burnout, trauma and moral injury pervasive in the industry. I’m determined to do it differently.

With Invisible Threads, I examine the individual, communal and systemic forces — and narratives — that keep people isolated and unwell. Why? Because I believe an educated, empathetic electorate can create the conditions for collective wellbeing. I’m also a fellow at Georgetown University’s research and design unit, The Red House, focused on work to transform cycles of intergenerational trauma into cycles of intergenerational wellbeing. Finally, I’m developing trauma-informed workshops to equip storytellers — and the people they cover — with tools to feel safer and more empowered than exploited and depleted.

This chapter deepens work I’ve pursued for more than two decades — from reporting on an authoritarian regime in post-genocide Cambodia, to the decline of democracy in Hong Kong, to the 2021 U.S. insurrection.