How Did You Develop the Imaginary Character Zoey?

By First Becoming a Storyteller to Dear Daughter

When my daughter was little, she fell in love with a stuffed lamb that she named Lamby. I told made-up stories about dear daughter and Lamby hundreds of times. Lamby had her own personality and brought humor and playfulness into our lives. Lamby became a part of our family, through storytelling and going with us everywhere. Although dear daughter is older now, Lamby still pops up into our lives, to provide some fun and real comfort as needed—she’s huggable and doesn’t mind getting bathed in tears.

By Becoming a Storyteller to People with Heart Wounds

To my surprise, I found that Jesus has given me the ability to help people make sense of how what happened in childhood continues to adversely affect them in adulthood. Adults who experienced childhood trauma and abuse may feel overwhelming emotions and body sensations, may believe lies about their lack of worth and lovableness, have a profound sense of being alone, and can often feel hopeless and helpless.

I wanted to create dialogue between me and a made-up character, as a way to help people understand concepts through storytelling and poetry. I named the character Zoey because Zoey means life. And Zoey is on a journey towards healing and becoming more alive.

Zoey’s (Imaginary) Family History

I crafted Zoey with a variety of painful childhood experiences so that more people could identify with Zoey’s childhood and the long-term impact of how growing up with abuse and neglect during childhood affects Zoey now. I made sure to not pattern Zoey after a real person.

Zoey’s parents had loud and sometimes violent fights, especially when her dad was drinking. Her mom tried to keep her dad from becoming angry. Her mom learned to pretend everything was fine. Her mom worked evenings and her dad liked to stay out drinking, so Zoey and her two brothers were left alone a few nights a week. In summers, Zoey and her brothers would stay with her aunt for a month and then her grandma (her parents didn’t have enough money for childcare). At her aunt’s, there were parties with alcohol and not much adult supervision. At her grandma’s, Zoey felt seen and cared for, for the first time in her life. She wished her grandma could adopt her and her brothers. Her mom and dad split up when she was 15, leaving Zoey with her mom and her brothers with her dad.

Today, Zoey is a 37-year-old woman who had a hard start in life. She is married to dear husband and has a dear son, age 13, and a dear daughter, age 10. She works as a school nurse and has had to cut back on her hours because of being overwhelmed as stuff from childhood has begun to bubble up and wreak havoc in her life. She’s in counseling. Sometimes she thinks her life is unraveling and wonders if she’s going crazy. But Zoey is starting to learn that she is beginning a journey toward health and wholeness that she has needed for a long time.

What is Zoey Learning to Do?

To become more alive, Zoey is learning to look inward at her heart wounds, to reach out to people for help along this journey, and to look upward to experience Jesus’s deep compassion and healing. She’s learning to grieve long and hard. She’s even been surprised to feel a lot of anger and rage pop up at times about how she was treated.

Zoey is learning that the more she is able to grieve the past and receive compassion from Jesus and others who help her on this journey, the more she is able to heal. Zoey now knows that when she pours out her heart to Jesus, He meets her in her deepest pain and keeps letting her know how much He loves her. After she feels those painful feelings now—that were too hard to bear alone in childhood—and she accepts Jesus’s compassion, she discovers that she feels better and has more energy (until the next yucky stuff bubbles to the surface).

Jesus is gonna help Zoey learn to feel safe—this is no small task! Zoey will be learning how to feel safe inside herself and how to move from feeling overwhelmed to calm. He also reminds Zoey that He’s her safe place. And Jesus brings safe people into Zoey’s life who love her good enough that she is starting to feel safe with them too. Learning to feel safe is vital because many people with unhealed heart wounds from childhood often don’t know how to feel safe, even when they are in a safe place.

Zoey is also learning about the long-term effects of unhealed trauma and how helpful it is to get some trauma education. That helps Zoey make sense of her (crazy feeling) reactions. All that she is learning helps her develop compassion both for the kid she was as well as her adult self now.