WOUNDED, GUARDED, and BRACEDFears, Protective Layers, Traumas, and Nervous System Contractions A Poetic Study of Why We Close, and How Love Softens Us Open Again By Michael Patrick
There is a tenderness waiting beneath every defense. A wisdom inside every contraction. A Love that never stopped reaching for you.
Through 80 gentle poetic reflections, WOUNDED, GUARDED, and BRACED speaks to the nervous system, not about it. Each page meets fear, tension, and overprotection as innocent gestures of Love-attempts to keep us safe when safety once felt impossible.
This is not a book of concepts, but a living field of trauma-aware tenderness-where every wound, every guard, every brace is met with compassion rather than correction.
Through calm language and somatic invitations, the body is reminded that its protections were never mistakes, only messages.
You'll journey through four tender stages of remembrance:
Part I - The Wounded When Love still hides behind pain. Gentle reflections for the tender ache that begins the healing.
Part II - The Guarded When protection learns it can rest. A soft honoring of the armor and masks that once kept you safe.
Part III - The Braced When the body learns to trust again. Somatic invitations that teach your breath and shoulders how to release.
Part IV - The Softening When Love becomes the only language. A return to innocence, belonging, and the body's natural peace.
Each entry includes: - A Poetic Reflection - A Loving Revelation (trauma-aware insight) - A Soothing Invitation (simple body-based cue) - A Love's Whisper (3-line mantra of safety and remembrance)
Written in the calming poetic tone of The Safe Haven Calm Collection, these pages are designed as a nervous-system sanctuary-each word a soft reminder that healing happens not through force, but through presence.
Who This Book Is For
Highly Sensitive People (HSPs) and empathic souls learning to feel safe in their own bodies.
Those healing from anxiety, overthinking, hypervigilance, trauma, or emotional exhaustion.
Readers seeking gentle, trauma-informed language for nervous-system healing.
Anyone longing to rediscover trust, rest, and the safety of unconditional Love.
What This Book TransmitsWOUNDED, GUARDED, and BRACED is more than poetry-it's an atmosphere of Love remembered. It offers calm permission to soften, to breathe, and to trust that even your protection was sacred. This is where trauma literacy, spirituality, and poetic beauty meet- a book written in the language of calm, for a world learning how to feel safe again.
This book belongs to what I call Somatic Spiritual Literature- a quiet meeting of body and awareness, where regulation becomes revelation, and healing and awakening are seen as one gentle movement of return. About the Author
Michael Patrick is the author of many books on Awareness, creativity, and healing. For more than four decades, he lived in contraction-braced and fearful-while navigating the weight of anxiety, depression, and periods of mania. Through devotion to daily practice and the study of the world's wisdom traditions, he discovered that safety, softness, and wholeness were always within. His books are companions (little medicine books) for this return, offering gentle words that help readers breathe, rest, and remember they are Safe, Loved, and Whole.
