Spare Changing for Trauma is both a memoir and an herbal healing book — because, for April Graham, healing has never existed separately from the life that made it necessary.

Inside, April shares pieces of her teenage years living homeless between the ages of 13 and 18. These chapters don’t move neatly from beginning to end, and they aren’t written to be comfortable. They unfold the way trauma often does — in fragments, memories, and moments that refuse to stay neatly contained. The stories include violence, neglect, survival, and the long work of carrying those years forward.

Woven through these stories are herbal chapters, each centered around a plant that was present during those experiences. These plants are not offered as fixes or metaphors. They are companions — sometimes the only steady presence, sometimes the only form of care available at all. The plants are allowed to be what they were: grounding, imperfect, and real.

Each herb chapter walks the reader through:

April’s lived relationship with the plant

how the plant has traditionally been used

what it does in the body, explained in clear, human language

practical ways to work with it

and the honest limits of what plants can and cannot do

As the book moves forward, the second half opens more fully into hands-on herbal practice. April shares accessible methods like infusions, tinctures, infused oils, salves, poultices, compresses, sitz baths, and more — alongside conversations about ethical harvesting, relationship with land, and respect for the plants themselves. Nothing is rushed. Nothing is dressed up to feel more spiritual or more marketable than it is.

This is not a polished trauma memoir meant to inspire from a distance.
And it isn’t a technical herbal manual.

It is a deeply human book about pain, survival, and healing — written by someone who lived it, and who understands that neither trauma nor healing happens in clean lines. The stories are real. The plants are real. And both are held with honesty and care.

Spare Changing for Trauma was written seven years ago.

It reflects April Graham’s voice, language, and emotional landscape at that time. The book has not been rewritten, modernized, or heavily edited to meet current editorial standards or expectations.

The writing flows naturally in April’s voice, but it is not perfectly grammatically correct at all times. There will be errors. This was a conscious decision to leave the work intact rather than polish it into something it was never meant to be.

This book reads more like a piece of lived work or art than a refined manuscript. It carries nonlinear storytelling and moments that may feel unresolved — because trauma and healing rarely arrive in clean, finished forms.

The intention of this book was never perfection.
It was honesty.

Readers should expect sincerity, vulnerability, and depth — not editorial polish.

Most herbal books teach plants as information — lists, actions, and recipes separated from the lives they’re used in. Spare Changing for Trauma does something different. • The plants are introduced through lived experience, not abstraction — each herb appears in the context of real moments, real wounds, and real survival • Trauma and healing are not separated; the book does not present plants as fixes, but as companions that existed alongside pain • Herbal information is grounded in relationship and use, not perfection or polish • The book does not promise transformation, enlightenment, or closure — it reflects healing as ongoing, imperfect, and human • It prioritizes honesty over aesthetics and lived truth over instructional neatness This is not a reference manual and it is not a feel-good herbal read. It is a book for readers who understand that plants don’t exist outside of life — and that healing doesn’t happen in isolation from the experiences that made it necessary.