Annita Sawyer is a Yale educated clinical psychologist, recently retired from a practice of more than forty years. Her journey to become a writer began with a first writers conference in 2003. A local writers’ group, national writers’ conferences, and generous artists residencies have provided her literary education. Annita’s work has appeared in both professional and literary journals, in three anthologies and a Psychology Today blog. Essays have won prizes and been included among Notables in the Best American Essays. Her memoir, Smoking Cigarettes, Eating Glass, won the 2013 Santa Fe Writers Project Literary Awards Nonfiction Grand Prize. It was published by SFWP in 2015. Using herself as a case study, Annita speaks to clinical audiences around the country. Her talks, essays, and stories illuminate lifetime consequences of childhood trauma, harmful effects of fads in psychiatric diagnosis and treatment, the enduring impact of stigma and shame, and the power of human connection to heal.