Dear Parts:
A Memoir of Trauma, Psychedelic Healing, and Coming Home to Myself
What if the parts of you that feel broken are actually trying to save you?
Dr. Kim Taylor thought she’d grown up in a “normal” family, where the absence of verbal affection and physical touch were all she knew. Raised on a diet of fast food and grease bombs, she spent her childhood overweight, learning early to deflect bullying with humor. Over time, chasing substantial goals—college, medical school, training for grueling athletic pursuits—ensured she had no opportunity to look within. Until a shocking diagnosis changed everything.
A raw and often painful journey of finding one’s way back to Self, Dear Parts lays the author bare, intimately depicting the use of IFS—Internal Family Systems—therapy, along with plant-based medicines and the writing of numerous letters to various “parts.” These modalities opened avenues of self-understanding and healing Kim didn’t realize were possible, the core of which revealed years of unrealized emotional neglect.
A deeply honest and affecting memoir, one that stirringly utilizes songs as representational guideposts, Dear Parts shows us what it looks like to courageously shift from five decades of living in a state of detachment within the head space, to embodiment with a sense of solace in the heart space—not in a prescriptive way, but in an inspiring and beautifully human way.
Author Kimberly Taylor 