Kristen Milstead is a writer, researcher, and activist who helps individuals with a history of trauma find their voices and overcome limiting beliefs imposed on them by others. She worked in a homeless shelter for teens and taught classes at her former under-resourced high school before completing her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Oklahoma.
After her experience in a pathological love relationship, she started a website for narcissistic abuse survivors, Fairy Tale Shadows, which has reached millions of people from over 180 countries. Her work has been featured on PsychCentral, HealthyPlace, Your Tango, and Thought Catalog, and been shared and endorsed by numerous clinicians and mental health professionals.
Her book Why Can’t I Just Leave is the first sociological analysis of narcissistic abuse, going beyond the psychology of the abuser and damage to survivors to explore the invisible structural power dynamics that make such abuse possible and give us clues about how to overcome it.
