Start Here: How to Read Sea Salt and Silence 📖

Before we begin, I want to tell you something important.

This is a story I lived, but I’m writing it now
as if I’ve just found the diary
of a girl named Alice.

She’s 13.
She’s scared, but careful.
Curious, but quiet.
And when the world doesn’t make sense,
she folds it into her diary
the only place she’s allowed to speak
without being silenced.

Alice is me.
And writing her as a character gives me space
to be honest,
to be careful,
to return to what I survived
with a little more breath in my lungs.

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How this series works:

Some posts might open with a note from me.

Then you’ll read from Alice’s diary:
Poetic, raw, unfolding in real time
as she tries to survive and make sense of it all.

After each entry, you’ll hear from me—Debra.
My voice, now. Reflecting.
Piecing together a story I spent years trying to forget.

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This Substack series is for anyone
healing from childhood trauma.

It’s a story about survival
and the long road back to your voice.

I’ll be keeping a list here with links to every entry,
so if you ever want to catch up,
or read from the beginning,
this will be your guide.

More soon,
Debra 💕