Welcome to Strong and Stable
Click here to watch a welcome video from Annie.
Welcome.
Click the video below for a personal welcome and to learn what this page is about.
I'm Annie Wright.
And if you've found your way here, I want to say this right from the start: You are not alone.
Before I became a trauma therapist… Before I built and sold a multi-million-dollar therapy center… Before I was quoted in Forbes, NBC, Business Insider, The Information, and HuffPost…
I was a girl growing up on an island off the coast of Maine, in a family fractured by egregious relational trauma.
Ambition was one of my earliest survival strategies. So was work. So was hunger.
The relentless drive to succeed got me off the island, becoming the first in my family to attend college (let alone the Ivy League). The concurrent secret eating disorder helped me feel like I had control and soothing in a life that often felt unlivable. Both helped me keep the reality of what I had lived through at bay, hidden in repressed memories. But by 25, both of those coping mechanisms failed.
After Brown, I was serving in the Peace Corps, stationed in Uzbekistan during the 2005 Andijan Massacre—an event that mirrored, in terrifying external form, the internal chaos and fear I'd carried since childhood. The jig was up. The payment was due. The relational trauma I'd been outrunning finally caught up to me.
It was at that point in my life that I realized I had to do intensive, foundational personal work—not just to heal, but to survive. And have a life that felt worth living.
That breaking point launched me into the first real chapter of my healing.
The rebuilding.
At age 25, I left my post Peace Corps life in Washington, DC. Heading out to Big Sur, California with nothing but a one way plane ticket and a carry on suitcase. I then spent nearly four years living, studying, and working at the famed Esalen Institute—a crucible for healing. It was there I began to put myself back together, psychologically, spiritually, and somatically. Healing deeply from my relational trauma.
And it was there I met the man who became my husband. We've now been together for 14 years, and we share a feisty, sugar coated jalapeno of a daughter we’re both pretty obsessed with.
After Esalen came graduate school. Then licensure. Then Evergreen Counseling—a boutique trauma-informed therapy center I founded in Berkeley, California. I scaled it to a multi-million-dollar practice with 24 full-time, fully benefited W2 employees all while raising a baby and supporting hundreds of clients myself.
And since Spring 2015, on my website I've written long form, high quality mental health essays about trauma, adult development, and relational healing—long before the cultural conversation caught up. My archive now holds more than 260 essays. Many of the relational trauma terms and frameworks now mainstream? I was writing about them years ago. My lived experience combined with my professional expertise made me an expert in that space.
The second pivot. The next layer of healing work.
In 2023, something big shifted again. My workaholism was full blown again, the last insidious impact of my relational trauma history and despite how increidibley my life looked on the outside, I was miserable inside of that multi-story house of life I had built. It was then that I got crystal clear that I wanted to sell my company. It wasn’t how I wanted to do my work in the world anymore. At the same time, I found and bought my dream home in my dream town—a sleepy coastal village in my favorite New England state. And in August 2024, I moved my little family across the country so we could put down our roots there.
And then, by January 2025, I had completed the sale of Evergreen.
For these past few years, I've been laying the groundwork to change the external circumstances of my life—to give myself a deeper layer of healing and to align my outside world with my inside one. To feel as good on the inside as my life looked on the outside.
That's what this Substack is, too.
It's part of how I want to live now. Slower. Smarter. Safer. More relational. More real. More deliberate.
Strong and Stable is the digital embodiment of that professional and personal shift and deeper layer of healing I’ve now done.
It's not just a newsletter—it's a community. A container. A coven. Camaraderie. A corner of the internet that says:
You are not alone. Your story is my story. And we’ve got this. Let’s get through it together?
And you know what? When it comes to healing relational trauma, feeling seen and supported by a trusted other (and others), in itself, is a massive healing agent.
So what is Strong and Stable?
This isn't just another therapist's ad hoc newsletter. It's a clinically rigorous, narrative-driven, nervous-system-informed community and regular curriculum (if you will) for those of us who built externally beautiful lives on top of shaky foundations—and are now feeling the sway.
Maybe you're:
Waking up at 3 a.m. filled with dread
Snapping at your kids or partner in ways that don't feel like you
Achieving more but enjoying it less
Feeling like you built a life you want to escape
Using alcohol and other coping mechanisms in a way that scares you
Afraid every day and feeling like your waking hours are like trying to scale Kilimanjaro
Tired in your bones, but scared to slow down
Quietly managing… but secretly afraid everything could collapse if you stop holding it all up
That's what unprocessed relational trauma can feel like.
Like living in a house that looks fine, but the foundation keeps shifting beneath your feet.
What becomes possible here.
When you begin to repair that psychological foundation—deliberately, expertly, and in relationship—things begin to change.
You might:
Sleep through the night
Parent with security instead of reactivity
Repair after rupture with a ton more skill
Say no without guilt
Enjoy the life you've built—without needing to escape from it
Or have the courage to build a different House of Life, one that’s built this time from authenticity and desire and not just reactivity and others’ wishes
Build friendships that nourish, not drain
Actually take care of your body—not punish or ignore it
Make decisions from desire, not damage control
Feel empowered financially, emotionally, relationally
Reclaim the adulthood you didn't get to have as a child
And maybe—for the first time—your life will feel as steady on the inside as it looks on the outside.
What you'll find here.
This space blends everything I've lived and everything I've studied:
15+ years of trauma therapy practice
A decade of writing publicly about relational trauma
260+ essays now exclusively housed here
And a personal path of profound rebuilding, from the inside out
Each month follows a gentle cadence:
1st Sunday: A long-form essay naming and reframing a core trauma pattern
2nd Sunday (Paid): A somatic and nervous-system-informed workbook with practices
3rd Sunday (Paid): A personal letter from me—honest, lived-in reflections
4th Sunday (Paid): A Q&A responding to your questions—anonymous always welcome
Ongoing:
Quick Notes: Brief, digestible reflections for low-capacity days
Private Chat (Paid): Where you can connect with me and other paid subscribers between posts—because healing happens in conversation, not just content
Who this is for.
This space is for those of us who:
Coped by being the strong one
Took care of everyone else, but not ourselves
Achieved, achieved, achieved—and still don't feel okay
Are done redecorating the rooms and ready to reinforce the foundation
Whether you've done therapy or never started, whether you're deeply in the work or just finding your way here, you are welcome.
Your options.
As a Free Subscriber, you'll receive:
Monthly long-form essays
Read-only access to select Quick Notes
As a Paid Subscriber ($8/month or $80/year), you'll receive:
Weekly content: essays, workbooks, personal letters, and Q&As
Comment access and community engagement
Access to my 260+ essay archive
Priority access to my future course Fixing the Foundations
Founding Members ($250/year) Also Receive:
Priority selection in Q&As
Founding-member-only threads
Influence over how this space grows
A final word.
If you're tired of holding it all up. If you're craving a different kind of container—one built from care and expertise, not bro-y content marketing. If you're ready for your internal world to finally match the strength and depth you've always had…
I built this for you. I built this for us.
Whether you stay on the free tier or join more fully—I'm so glad you're here.
Warmly,
Annie