Letter to: Undisclosed: Toward Justice (Rabia Chaudry, Susan Simpson, Colin Miller) Podcast covering wrongful convictions
Dear Professor [Miller / Simpson],
My name is Bruce Whealton, and I’m writing to seek your guidance—or any support you may be able to offer—regarding a wrongful conviction I’ve lived with for over 20 years in North Carolina. It impacts every aspect of my life.
I worked very hard to become a mental health professional…
✨ 8 AI Tools Every Writer & Creator Should Know (May 2025 Edition)
Whether you're a memoirist, poet, podcaster, or content creator, artificial intelligence is opening powerful new doors. Each tool below is designed to enhance your creative process, streamline promotion, or bring your stories to life across platforms.
This is part of my ongoing effort to curate AI tools for writers, artists, and therapists who use creativity as a path to healing, connection, and meaning. Expect new…
I’m honored to share that my newest memoir,
Tell Me I Am Not Invisible: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Learning to Live Again,
is now unfolding live on my website.
The book is told in two parts.
Part I is the story of becoming — a journey of emerging from emotional deprivation and shame to discover love, creativity, and purpose.
Part II, still being finalized, will explore the heartbreak of loss, trauma, and the long road to healing.
You can start reading from the beginning — including the preface and Table of Contents — here:
👉…
It was April 15, 2000. I had a few books stacked beside the bed—reading material that reflected the many states of mind I moved through in a week: psychodynamic theory, ego state therapy, even a book written by a woman with dissociative identities using collages and magazine cutouts to represent the parts of herself.
I had been reflecting on all of it—how we carry different…
After graduating in 1996, I had officially become a therapist. But that alone wasn’t the milestone. The deeper truth is this: I was now helping others with the very issues that once defined me.
I began my post-graduate career at Brynn Marr Psychiatric Hospital, then worked briefly at two public mental health agencies. And while each role had moments of meaning—particularly…
In the last chapter, I mentioned being employed at Brynn Marr Psychiatric Hospital. While the work with clients was rewarding, the values and norms of the setting were not a good match. I then worked in two public mental health settings. The second one was Sampson County Mental Health Center. That lasted just about 9 months before I wanted to move into private practice.
I…
Graduating in May 1996 with my Master’s in Social Work should have been the climax of a long journey. But in truth, it felt more like a beginning. The real transformation—becoming a therapist, becoming myself—was just taking shape.
I accepted a position as a therapist at Brynn Marr Psychiatric Hospital, a locked inpatient facility in Jacksonville, North Carolina, not far…
By the time I entered graduate school in 1993, I had already spent nearly a decade preparing for the person I was becoming—not just professionally, but emotionally, socially, and spiritually. What began at age eighteen as a painful struggle with shyness and toxic shame had, through small but steady steps, transformed into something resilient, intentional, and deeply rooted in empathy.
…
In an earlier chapter, I described the most meaningful accomplishment of my life: building a family with Lynn. As husband and wife, we were a family in every way that mattered.
But long before I could meet someone like Lynn—let alone be ready for the kind of connection we shared—I had to become someone else entirely. I had to grow.
During college, I spent…
During the summer before my senior year at Georgia Tech, I was assaulted with a different kind of violence—this time, not physical, but emotional and existential.
It came in the form of a phone call from my sister Carrie. She was distraught, crying, barely able to speak. She had just been assaulted by both of our parents. At nineteen, she had been trying to start fresh at a…