Wendy Williams
Author
Healing the Trauma of Infant Surgery
Operated on as an infant, without anesthesia, Wendy P. Williams began life at war with her body. There were tubes everywhere, in and out of every opening, her mother reminded her on every anniversary of her surgery. Autobiography of a Sea Creature takes readers on Williams’ difficult sensory journey toward healing, as she communes along the way with horseshoe crabs, dolphins, and other marine life that taught her the restorative power of beauty, resilience, and interdependence. At times luscious and lyrical, at other times analytical and reflective, this literary memoir portrays the dissociative experience of trauma and the roots of self-destructive cycles, as well as the tragic results of medical beliefs at the time that infants could not feel pain. Autobiography of a Sea Creature is both a love letter to the earth and a hopeful testament of humans' capacity to heal our deepest wounds.
Printed book available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Now also available as an audio book from Amazon and Audible.com.
(click the "Buy from Amazon" or "Audible.com" buttons below for details.)
Free download also available from UCSF Health Humanities.
My 20-minute interview with Sacramento's Cap Radio by Insight host Vicki Gonzalez. Listen here.
I was featured in CUTDOWN, a documentary which reveals the practice of infant surgery without anesthesia prior to 1987. View it here.
Interview with Stephen Beitler, adjunct UCSF faculty. Listen here.
The Trauma of Infant Surgery - Pushing Limits - January 19, 2024 | KPFA
An interview with Adrienne Lauby on the KPFA radio show Pushing Limits "providing critical coverage of disability issues." Listen here.
My lecture at the C. F. Reynolds Medical History Society, April 2025. Listen here.
Autobiography of a Sea Creature
In this absorbing book, we are privileged to join Wendy in her journey of 50 years to recover from surgery as an infant when anesthesia was not routinely administered. Ironically, this life-saving operation resulted in the question she could not address with certainty until she was 52 – was she dead or alive? You will be riveted by the chronicling of her experiences and the way she weaves together her inside and outside life as she uses creative processes—breath work, drawings, journaling, and the exploration of her powerful dreams—to search for the answer. Like her role model the biologist Rachel Carson, Wendy crafts exquisite observations of the natural world and her beloved sea creatures, sprinkled like tiny jewels throughout her writing. Reading this book will send you on a most memorable odyssey into a child’s world that few people have been able to make.
Dr. Linda Gantt, PhD, ATR-BC, is the owner and Executive Director of Intensive Trauma Recovery and ITR Training Institute LLC. In late 2020, she co-founded Help For Trauma Inc., a non-profit established to fund trauma research and offer trauma-effective training to mental health workers.
Praise & Reviews
In Autobiography of a Sea Creature, Wendy gives a voice to infants unable to articulate, who, due to necessary medical procedures, experience trauma. We journey with Wendy as she discovers the profound physical and emotional effects of this initial surgery and its consequences throughout her life. She shows us that the tentacles of the trauma extend and blend beyond her to her family and relationships. With the sea and its creatures interwoven in her life, the reader can also ride the fluid waves into healing and well being. With the growing awareness of trauma and PTSD in the world, this autobiography is one of support for both our precious little ones and all adults who were infants at one time.
Jean Anne Zollars, PT, DPT, MA, BI-D, Instructor in Visceral and Neural Manipulation for the Barral Institute, specializing in Pediatrics. Upcoming book: Visceral Manipulation for Pediatrics. www.jazollarspt.com
Autobiography of a Sea Creature is not just a story of one woman's emotional and psychological rebirth from the trauma of infant surgery. It is the poetic, haunting, life-affirming journey of healing an ecosystem, whether that is our human body or our planet. Wendy Williams has written an evocative memoir of awakening that will inspire anyone who cares about resilience, self-exploration, and our capacity for compassion.
Mary Fifield
Fire & Water: Stories from the Anthropocene
Available now: https://www.fireandwaterstories.com/
My Latest Blog
Befriend Your Inner Baby
​There is a baby inside me that I ran away from for so long. A baby wounded, a baby in despair. A baby who felt helpless. A baby afraid of her own breath. Until I embraced this baby, accepted her, paid attention to her, and loved her, I ran from her, afraid.
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I was told she was ugly; she was covered with tubes that went in and out of her body. I was told she was near death, a skeleton. I was told she, her condition, made life difficult for her mother, father, and brother.
This baby was me, but I did not want to be her. I had to learn though to love her so that I could find my way back to myself. This baby deserved my love, my embrace. Yes, she was fragile and very ill shortly after birth. Yes, her nervous system was completely dysregulated after the surgery was done at one-month old without anesthesia or pain control. Yes, her condition made her parents afraid and made her brother hate her, for he lost their attention. But this baby needed love and care and in order to be whole, I had to stop running away from her.
Recently, I found a picture of myself at three months old. The photo had captured me with a smile on my face. Not a big one, but my lips turned up happily. I seem to be delighted at something, interested, curious. Most of my early pictures show a baby in shock, a deer in the headlights. Mom told me that I did not smile until I was three-months-old as “There was nothing to smile about.” But in that picture, I was a regular baby, a baby free of her prison of fear, a baby opening to the world, her world. I have taped this picture to my bulletin board so I can see her every day.
I have chosen to embrace this baby, my inner baby, and to no longer attach the negative images of her given to me. I see myself as an alive baby, not a dead one or almost dead. I am a beautiful baby, deserving love and care, not guilt over what I put everyone through. This curious baby, this slightly smiling and delighted baby, is me, and she is the one who I am learning about right now. Sure, she was wounded, but she survived. She is strong and she is lovable. She no longer needs me to protect her. She has grown into a beautiful, open-hearted woman.
Running away from the realities of my early experience got me in deep trouble—further and further alienated from myself. But this inner baby is now my home. She and I are no longer separate, and my nervous system is a lot more calm. Together, we are growing into a future of deeper peace and understanding. To put it plainly, I just feel so much happier.
Have you embraced your inner baby? Are you still running from what happened to you early on? Check in with yourself. And if you have left her or him behind, consider finding a way home to this baby. It may not be easy, but make this baby a part of your life now. Try to see her for who she is, not for what you were told about her. Befriend her. Hold her and hug her and tell her how beautiful she is. Keep her close. For this baby is you. Together, a new kind of happiness and peace may be found. This is happening for me. May it happen for you.
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See Upcoming Appearances
I will be reading passage and signing books
at these venues. I hope to see you!
Thursday, April 2, 6:30-8:00 pm
Marin Poetry Center,
Mill Valley Public Library
375 Throckmorton Avenue
Mill Valley, California 94941
About Wendy Williams
Wendy Patrice Williams is a writer intent on getting the message out about the fact that before 1987 in America and in many parts of the world, anesthesia and pain control were largely withheld from use on infants needing invasive medical procedures. As a result, their suffering is lifelong due to PTSD and other mental and physical disturbances.