Welcome to canDID Expressions
Our 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization is a community of people with trauma-based dissociation who explore and share our lived experience through writing and other expressive arts.
We look forward to getting to know you!
canDID Expressions
We are a nonprofit community of people who live with trauma-based dissociation. Through writing and expressive arts, we explore our stories, honor our realities, and build meaningful connections with others who share our journey.
We Gather
For many of us, the people who understand our experiences are found in treatment settings, where conversations are shaped by the language of therapy and the goal of “getting better.” Those spaces are invaluable. But when healing is measured primarily through diagnosis and progress, it’s easy to see ourselves as something to fix, rather than someone to know.
That’s why canDID Expressions exists.
Here, we gather as whole people, without having to mask or explain ourselves, and offer each other mutual care. We acknowledge our trauma without being defined by it. Someone might bring a poem, a paint stroke, or simply the willingness to show up, and each is met with curiosity, compassion, and respect.
We Create
Together, we turn memory into meaning. A poem. A painting. A shared moment of understanding. Creating gives shape to experiences that words alone can’t always hold.
We offer virtual groups in writing, art, and movement, along with open mics and other creative gatherings. Individual support is available through therapeutic peer mentoring and writing coaching. However you choose to create, the belief is the same: giving voice to our experiences can be transformative. And it doesn’t have to stop with you.
Your story can become part of our larger community too, shared under your name or anonymously. When you share your writing and art, you’re doing more than expressing yourself. You’re helping someone else make sense of their own experiences.
We Grow
What begins in expression becomes something deeper: a new relationship with ourselves.
We begin to see ourselves differently. Not just as survivors, but people shaped by courage, wisdom, and resilience. This helps us meet ourselves with greater compassion, and live more authentically.
Our past doesn’t change. How we carry it does. And in that shift, we find hope, agency, and the desire to make a difference in someone else’s journey.
We Give Back
That desire is what builds this community, which is made by people with lived experience, for people with lived experience.
When you’re ready to turn that desire into action, we’re here to help you find meaningful ways to contribute. You might facilitate a group, write for our newsletter, develop resources, support outreach, raise funds, or share your strengths in other ways. However you show up, you help write the next chapter of someone else’s story.
Recent Expressions
Paint It Out
~H
Paint It Out
~ Ann
Castles Under Lightening
JM. Austin My therapist tells me that dissociation is a skillThe way I can escape my body like a magicianFloat to other worlds for whatever I needPeace, safety, solitudeDissociation was my first friend.Grasping me by my hand and carrying me away from the horrors of...
The Choice
They say happiness is a fleeting thing,a whisper lost in the wind—a candle flickering, barely clinging,too fragile to withstand the din. But I have found it in the wreckage,in the storm’s relentless tide,in nights that howled with lonely echoeswhere no light was left...
The Homecoming
I came out, and they had it all figured out. It was like waking up in the middle of a story I didn’t start,a story that had already been written without me.Everything was already in place.The rhythm of their voices,the way they moved through the days,the way they...