Dr. Sunita Merriman is an author and thinker whose work, The Way Back Home®, comprises six poetry collections, the Self-Love Self-Care First® practice, and The Way Back Home Flywheel. The Anthology’s six collections map the crossing from trauma to transcendence, a crossing within reach of every human being. The first published volume, The Way Back Home: An Anthology, is forthcoming.

The work is offered with the highest reverence, love, and care, in service of the reader’s own self-discovery and self-awareness, alongside whatever professional care indicated.

I am a former dentist and sleep medicine specialist. The poems have arrived over the past decade, in their own time, and have come to be a body of work I had not planned. The first published collection, Stripping: My Fight to Find Me (2018), was generously received by Dr. Habib Davanloo, the developer of Intensive Short-Term Dynamic Psychotherapy (ISTDP) wrote that it is “of great importance to the future of dynamic psychotherapy and humanity.” The work has continued since.

On trauma and sleep. I wrote this article to shed some light on the connection between ACEs and sleep.

The debilitating impact of trauma on sleep is beginning to be seen in the results of research studies. But those who suffer from trauma and mental health issues could tell you directly how sleep is elusive for them and how it negatively impacts their body, safety, relationships, mental health, decision-making, and quality of life. I was one such person. Until I sought professional help for my issues.

‘ACEs, Integrative Medicine, and the Mind Body Connection – Why Dental Sleep Practitioners Must Take a Seat at the Table.’in Dental Sleep Practice, Winter 2020 edition.