I scored 4/4 on the wound test. This is what I did next.

Part one · the night

The comment I almost posted.

It was 10:40pm. My daughter had finally gone down, I had a lukewarm tea and forty minutes of me-time, and the algorithm handed me a video of someone flipping through a journal page. Four headings. Abandonment. Guilt. Trust. Neglect. A list of traits under each.

I read the first list and thought, okay, a bit. The second, fine, that's just being polite. The third, I mean, who doesn't. Then the fourth one. Neglect. "Struggles to say no." "Represses emotions." "Normally attracts people who don't appreciate them." I put the phone face-down on the sofa.

what I typed"lol the former gifted child turned burnt out people pleaser in me just aced another test she didn't want to pass"deleted · 10:52pm

I didn't post it. I scrolled instead. Twenty-one thousand people had liked "4/4 I'm acing this test." Someone said "Raised by Boomers starter pack." Someone said "I was just trying to enjoy my me time while the kids sleep and got hit with this," and I actually laughed out loud, alone, in the dark. And then I read "ok but what if I have all 4? do I win" and nobody under it had an answer. Four hundred replies. Jokes, all the way down.

Everyone had the same score. Nobody had a next step.

Here's the part I didn't say in the comment: I don't really remember my childhood. Not the early bit. I have maybe six clear memories before I was ten, and I'd always assumed that was normal. So every "go back to the moment you first felt unloved" exercise I'd ever tried had just... bounced. There was no moment to go back to. There was a door, and it was shut, and I'd stopped knocking.

I ordered the journal anyway. It's a good journal. I did eleven pages.

Part two · what I tried first

Eleven pages, a six-month waitlist, and a stack of index cards.

The journal stalled the way they all stall for me: on the blank page. "Write about your anger." I would stare, write two polite sentences, and feel like I'd failed a class. I called a therapist. Six-month waitlist, then £95 a session, then a cancellation because of nursery pickup, then the guilt about the cancellation, which, yes, I'm aware.

What actually worked started small and a bit embarrassing. I made myself a test. I took the four lists and turned every trait into a sentence I could score 0 to 3, because "yes/no" had given me four yeses and nowhere to go. When I added it up, Neglect was 27 out of 30. Guilt was 22. Trust 19. Abandonment 11. For the first time the four wounds weren't a pile, they were a shape. One of them was running the show. The other three were coping with it.

Scoring it didn't fix anything. It told me where to start. That turned out to be most of the battle.

Then the memory problem. I stopped trying to go backwards. Instead I kept a note on my phone: every time I snapped, went blank, or said "I'm fine" on autopilot, I wrote what happened, what my body did, and the sentence in my head. Two minutes. After three weeks I read it back and the pattern was so obvious I was almost annoyed. I didn't need a memory. The wound was reproducing itself every Tuesday.

The index cards came last. One question a day, on my lock screen, because that's the only place I reliably look. "When you say I'm fine, what's the sentence you just swallowed?" I'd see it at the school gate and again at 3pm and by bedtime I'd answered it without sitting down.

Three years, honestly

It wasn't a glow-up. It was a slow one.

July 2023

The night.

4/4. "Do I win?" Eleven journal pages. Therapist waitlist.

Autumn 2023

The score.

Turned the lists into 40 sentences, 0–3 each. Neglect 27. First time I knew where to start.

Winter 2023–24

The phone note.

Trigger logging instead of memory digging. Found "The Fine Machine" and "The Overfunctioner" in my own handwriting.

2024

Seven days at a time.

One wound, one week, one page a day. Ten minutes. Added a 60-second body reset after I had to close the book twice.

2025

The cards.

52 questions, four suits, on my lock screen. Four "regulate" cards for the days a question landed too hard.

Spring 2026

Re-score.

Neglect 14. Guilt 13. Trust 12. Abandonment 7. Still have all four. They're not driving.

Now

This page.

Friends kept asking for "the test" and "the phone note thing." So I cleaned them up properly, got them designed, and put them here.

What changed, what didn't

My two scores, side by side.

I'm showing you these because "healed" is a word I don't trust anymore. I'd rather show you the shape moving.

Day one · July 2023

Abandonment

Guilt

Trust

Neglect

Neglect: "running the show." Three others: "loud." Me: fine, thanks.

Re-score · Spring 2026

Abandonment

Guilt

Trust

Neglect

Everything "present." Nothing "running the show." I still apologise to furniture sometimes.

The numbers didn't go to zero. They're not supposed to.

What I actually made

The three things that stayed on my desk.

I tried a lot. These are the only three I was still using a year later, cleaned up and properly designed so you don't have to squint at my handwriting.

the test, grown up

The Wound Map

The 40-sentence scored assessment, your Wound Profile, and the page I needed that night: "If you scored high on all four." Then four 7-day tracks, one page a day. Printable, or write on it in GoodNotes.

58 pages · US Letter + A4 · Trigger→Root worksheets · Day-28 re-score

$19on its own

the phone note, grown up

No-Memory Shadow Work

21 days, 10 minutes a day, for people whose childhood is a shut door. Week 1 collect the evidence, Week 2 find the pattern, Week 3 rewrite it. Comes as a Notion template with the three logs I kept, plus a PDF if Notion isn't your thing.

Dashboard · 21 daily pages · Triggers / Patterns / Check-ins · Scripts Library · 34-page PDF

$29on its own

the index cards, grown up

The Shadow Deck

52 questions in four suits, plus four Regulate cards for when one lands too hard. 52 lock-screens, a print-and-cut deck, and a tiny offline "draw a card" page for your phone.

1179×2556 PNGs · duplex print sheet · works with no internet

$12on its own

Before you buy

Who I made this for. And who I didn't.

If this is you, hi.

You got 4/4 and your first instinct was to make a joke about it
You're the eldest daughter, the capable one, the "I'm fine" one
You've bought a journal before and it's still 90% blank
You don't remember much of being small, and you're tired of being told to
You have ten minutes a day, usually after someone's asleep

Please don't buy this if

You're in crisis tonight. The numbers at the bottom of this page come first. I mean it.
You want therapy. I'm not a therapist and this isn't that. It's the thing I did alongside the waitlist.
You want someone to tell you you're healed. I won't. I'll show you a shape moving.
You want it done to you. Every page needs a pen.

The offer

Everything I made, for less than one therapy session.

That's not a dig at therapy. It's the honest comparison I made in 2023, standing in my kitchen with a waitlist email open.

$39 $60

The Wound Map + No-Memory Shadow Work + The Shadow Deck

The 40-sentence scored assessment and the "all four" page
Four 7-day tracks, one page a day, printable or tablet
The 21-day no-memory program (Notion + PDF)
52 cards for your lock screen, your printer, and your pocket
Every future update, free. I'm still using these, so there will be some.

Get all three · $39

or just one: The Wound Map $19 · No-Memory $29 · The Deck $12

If you do one day and it gave you nothing you didn't already have, email me within 14 days and I'll refund it. No form. I'd rather hear why.

The 'If you scored high on all four' page

This is a self-reflection tool, not therapy. If something comes up that feels too big, stop, breathe, and reach out to a professional or a crisis line (US: call or text 988 · UK & IE: Samaritans 116 123).

Things people ask me

Honest answers.

I got 4/4 too. Which one do I start with?

That's the whole point of scoring it instead of ticking it. Four high numbers almost always means one root wound and three that grew up around it as coping. The Wound Map has a body-based tie-breaker for exactly this, and a full page on what to do when everything is high. Mine was Neglect. Yours might not be.

I genuinely don't remember my childhood.

Same. Nothing here asks you to go back. The 21-day program works entirely from the present: what sets you off, where your body tightens, who you keep picking, what annoys you in other people. The pattern shows up on its own. There's also a page on what to do if a memory does surface, because sometimes one does, and you deserve to know what to do with it.

Is this just journaling?

Journaling is five of the ten minutes. The rest is a score, a two-minute trigger log, a one-line reframe, a 60-second body reset, and a weekly review that turns your entries into a pattern. Blank pages are the thing I was trying to escape.

Is shadow work dangerous?

It can be heavy. I had to close the book twice in the first year, which is why every tool now opens with a two-minute grounding page and every day ends with a reset. If you've gone numb, can't feel your hands, or feel much younger than you are: stop, do the page, and come back tomorrow. That's not failing. That's finding something.

Are you a therapist?

No. I'm a person who did this for three years, badly and then less badly, and wrote down what worked. If you can access therapy, please do; this sits alongside it, not instead of it. There's a resources page in every product with how to find someone.

Did you use AI to write this?

No. I know the comment sections too. The writing, the questions and the framework are mine, with a designer's help on layout. It's why there are only 52 cards and not 500.

What do I actually get, and when?

A download link straight away. Two PDFs for The Wound Map (US Letter and A4). A Notion import folder plus a 34-page PDF for the 21-day program. A folder of 52 lock-screen images, a print sheet, and one small HTML file for the deck. No app, no login, no subscription.

Last thing

You didn't win anything. But you don't have to stay at the checklist.

If you're reading this at 10:40pm with a cold tea and a phone face-down beside you, I know. I was there. The joke was good. The score was real. And nobody handed you the next page.

This is the next page. It's not magic and it's not fast. It's ten minutes, most days, and a shape that slowly changes. That turned out to be enough for me.

— Lucie

Get all three · $39

Instant download · 14-day refund · written by a person