Creator Spotlight: Debra King
Trauma-Informed Writer, Poet, and Certified Trauma-Informed Writing Coach
This Week’s Featured Creator
This week, I’m delighted to introduce Debra King, the writer behind Beautiful Things Grow Here.
Quick Introduction
Learning more about Debra’s talents and offerings here on Substack has been delightfully inspiring.
As a trauma-informed writer and poet, Debra shares personal essays, poetry, and gentle reflections that linger long after the final words have been read.
Her gentle and welcoming community offers a sacred space to process, reflect, and rebuild at a pace that feels deeply healing and restorative.
One sentence, in particular, stayed with me long after our conversation. I believe it beautifully captures the heart of Debra's work:
I want them to know they are not what happened to them, but what they choose to create from it.
I hope you enjoy meeting Debra and discovering the treasured gifts within Beautiful Things Grow Here, as much as I have.
Conversation with Debra King
What is the heart of your Substack, and what do you hope readers experience when they spend time there?
I started Beautiful Things Grow Here because I know what it feels like to feel completely frozen by life. When you’ve been through trauma, your world can feel incredibly small. I wanted to build something where we can just slow down and process things together without any pressure. When people spend time here, I want them to feel safe and I hope they leave feeling like they can take a deep breath and go at their own natural pace.
What inspired you to begin writing or creating on Substack?
I started writing when I was a teenager, and back then, my voice was so shaky. I was scared of everything. I thought if I just forgot about what happened, I could move on. I definitely wasn’t writing down the details of my past back then, I was just writing poetry and random thoughts because I had no other way to express the heavy emotions inside me. But because I didn’t know how to handle those feelings, when I did pour things out on paper, I often ended up re-traumatizing myself. I didn’t realize that just touching those dark corners in my poems would trigger everything, leaving my body completely frantic and exhausted. Over time, I learned that poetry and writing could be more than just hobbies or a way to survive; they could be the exact tools I used to safely find my way back into my own skin.
But finding those tools was a long process, and I didn’t start my true healing journey until a few years ago. I am 47 now, and it took decades of carrying the secrets of my past before I began doing the deep work of therapy and learning how to safely reparent myself. Once I started discovering how to work with my nervous system instead of against it, I realized how many other people were still fumbling in that same isolated darkness and I wanted to share the tools that finally brought me some peace.
I chose Substack because I needed a space that allowed for a more intentional way of connecting. Social media can feel so overwhelming and chaotic, but this platform feels more like a cozy, spacious room where I can share honest personal essays and reflections without any glossy filters. It gave me a way to move from just working through things alone in my own journals to building a gentle healing circle with people who want to process these things together safely, at a pace that protects our well-being.
Is there a topic, question, or idea that continually calls you back in your work? If so, what is it, and why does it matter to you?
I am always drawn back to how our bodies hold onto our past experiences, and how we can use writing to safely move through that tension. Living with multiple chronic illnesses myself, I know exactly how deeply childhood trauma and grief imbed themselves in our physical bodies.
That connection is why my work focuses so heavily on emotional healing and the hard work of rebuilding yourself after survival. As a writer and certified trauma-informed writing coach with training in somatic therapy, I teach people how to write near something before trying to write directly about it. That means pacing yourself and writing what you can handle right now, rather than diving straight into the center of a wound.
It matters to me because I want to help people build a practice that actually feels like care, not something that triggers a physical setback. It is exactly why I created Beautiful Things Grow Here. I wanted a supportive place for personal essays, poetry, and honest reflections on how we can all become a little softer with ourselves.
If your writing or creative work could make one meaningful difference in someone’s life, what would you hope that difference would be?
I want to help people see that they can face their past and hold their own difficult stories without being swallowed by them. If someone reads my work or tries a writing prompt or somatic exercise and realizes that allowing themselves to feel the heavy things is exactly how they return to themselves, then that is everything to me.
I want them to know they are not what happened to them, but what they choose to create from it.
A Favorite Photo
The photo I’m sharing, was taken at Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, and it captures the exact moment I saw my poetry book in a bookstore for the very first time. My dream has always been to see my work sitting on a shelf among the authors I grew up admiring, so this was a dream come true. It is also incredibly special because my first poetry book, Metamorphosis, is a deep exploration of grief; I wrote it six months after my dad died, and a year later, there I was holding it in the store.
What is something that brings you joy or peace in your everyday life outside of writing?
I love being out in nature and getting my hands dirty gardening, watching things grow and change. At the end of the day, I really love the process of cooking a meal from scratch, chopping vegetables, and putting something comforting together. Just sitting down to eat, relaxing, and laughing with my husband completely grounds me. Those simple, quiet moments remind me of how good it feels to just be here, to be safe, and to be present in my own life.
Featured Article
How I’m Healing Through Writing About Trauma
Creator Contact Information
Publication Name: Beautiful Things Grow Here
Anything else you’d like readers to know?
I recently updated my paid subscription into The Healing Garden. I chose that name because a room has four strict walls, but a garden has room to breathe, to shift with the seasons, and to grow at its own natural pace. Inside our circle, we do bi-monthly audio poetic remedies where I read the poems aloud and share the deeper trauma-informed ‘why’ behind the lines, along with body-focused writing prompts.
I also offer self-paced mini-courses at the end of each month, like Tending the Soil: Somatic Writing for High Anxiety, which are deep-dive modules created to help you navigate patterns or places where your nervous system tends to get stuck.
But whether you want to dig a little deeper with us there or just stay in our free circle, I am just incredibly grateful you are here today.
If This Resonates With You
One of the most meaningful ways to support a creator is simply to read their work and stay connected to it.
If something here speaks to you, I encourage you to take a moment to explore Debra’s Substack.
You can also support their work in small but powerful ways:
Subscribe to their publication so you don’t miss new writing
Leave a comment to let them know what resonated
Restack or share a piece you loved
Pass their work along to someone who might need it
These small actions are what help independent writers continue creating and what make spaces like Substack feel alive.
Interested in Being Featured?
Creator Spotlight exists to celebrate writers, artists, and creators whose work brings meaning, reflection, creativity, and connection to the Substack community.
If you’d like to be considered for a future feature, feel free to reach out. I’m always open to discovering new voices and sharing work that deserves to be seen.
You may also enjoy this earlier reflection on lifting voices and supporting one another within the Substack community:
Want More Discoveries Like This?
If you’re enjoying Creator Spotlight, I invite you to subscribe to Savor Life Studio.
Each week, I feature a creator whose work brings insight, creativity, encouragement, and heart into the world.
If you’d like these discoveries delivered straight to your inbox, I’d love to have you join us at Savor Life Studio.
Thank you for being part of a space where creators support creators and thoughtful work is shared and celebrated. Your presence here means the world to me.
With much love and gratitude,
Lis 💖
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Creator Spotlight: Courtney Cunningham
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Creator Spotlight: Saira Anwar
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Great interview! I enjoyed reading this 💜
Another beautiful spotlight Lis! Such a pleasure getting to know Debra 💖